


2.3 Beware the Banshee

by William_Easley



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: F/M, Folklore, Hurt, Monster - Freeform, Romance, Violence, Wendip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-29
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-11-21 06:08:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 49,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11351448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/William_Easley/pseuds/William_Easley
Summary: At the beginning of the Mystery Twins' third summer in Gravity Falls, a terrible warning comes: the banshee wails that someone they all love will die. And when the banshee predicts death . . . it will come.





	2.3 Beware the Banshee

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own Gravity Falls or its characters, the property of the Walt Disney Company and Alex Hirsch. I write only for fun, because I love Alex Hirsch's creation and his people and, I hope, to entertain other fans; I make no money from my fanfictions.

**Beware the Banshee**

By William Easley

_For my dad, who was willing to watch a cartoon show with his grown-up son. Thanks, man. I miss you._

* * *

**Chapter 1**

"I didn't expect this!" Dipper panted as they sped down the hill.

Wendy, dressed out for running—she had stashed an overnight bag in Grunkle Stan's car before the two of them flew down to California—laughed, her long legs flashing. "You gotta stay in trainin', man!"

"Yeah, but I'm a sprinter! It's like, four miles to the Shack!"

"We'll slow down when we get off the driveway!"

The McGucket house—formerly the Northwest Mansion—perched atop a sort of butte, just big enough for the enormous house and a sloping but expansive backyard. The approach lay in a steep, long drive, and running down it was almost as hard as running up it. "Have to—come back—for my stuff!" Dipper gasped.

"No sweat, Dip! Stan an' Mabel will haul it over."

Dipper saved his breath for running. Fine thing! Five-thirty on a Sunday morning, his first day away from school and back in Gravity Falls, and Wendy had practically yanked him out of bed after only about three and a half hours of sleep, and then she told him he had three minutes to dress out, and with him dressed but barely conscious, she had led him to the front driveway to stretch out and set off for the long run to the Mystery Shack!

He would have hated it. Except here she was in a tank top, running shorts, and her track shoes, her long red hair flying as they sped downhill.

"Man," he gasped, "I missed this so much!"

"Me too, dude! Here we go. Leveling out. OK, let's pace it so we don't collapse."

They settled into the long-stride lope that would carry them for miles. With a little warm surprise, Dipper realized he could make it. A year of track had at least conditioned his body so an effort that would have collapsed him a year earlier was now easy to take—so to speak—in stride. He even got his breath back.

And though his head still felt the fog of sleep deprivation, the fresh air in his lungs, the blue sky overhead, and the girl beside him made all the difference. The sun had risen only minutes earlier and had not yet heated everything up, so they ran through a cool morning, past rows of pines that scented the air. They made the turn and headed toward town, running alongside the highway, no cars on it this early. Ahead of them a couple of deer, a doe and a young fawn, bolted and sped off into the forest.

"Can you talk?" Wendy asked.

"Yeah, think so. Little bit hard."

"OK, that's s'posed to be a sign that this is a good cardio pace. You sweatin', man?"

"Yeah."

"Then we nailed it. So tell me about that first race you won."

"Against four other schools. Small meet. Pretty easy win for me. Surprise was I had to run in the 800. Hadn't trained for that."

"Why'd you have to run?"

"Flu season. Our regular guy got sick. I didn't win."

"Too bad, but I'm not surprised."

"Came in second. Cooledge, the guy who won, also took the state championship last Saturday."

Wendy laughed so hard she staggered a little before regaining her rhythm. "Not too shabby! Hey, you did pack the trapper hat again?"

"Yeah, in my duffel."

"Then Stan will bring it to the Shack later."

They reached downtown, still sleeping in the long-shadowed light of first day. Dipper felt a glow—they passed Greasy's Diner, just opening for early breakfast, and he waved at Lazy Susan, unlocking the door. She yelled, "Hi, Dipper! Good to see ya!"

Ah, there ahead he saw the patrol car. Gravity Falls's finest, and that wasn't saying much, ever alert, ready to serve and protect (the deputy served the sheriff coffee, and the sheriff protected their doughnuts against thieves) sat inside the cruiser. They had parked at the curb and both were snoozing, Sheriff Blubs snoring loud enough to scare away a woodpecker, Deputy Durland slumped with his head hanging out the passenger side, a long string of drool hanging from his open mouth.

Wendy and Dipper ran past, and then out of town they sidetracked to the water tower. "What happened to Robbie's muffin?" Dipper asked, surprised that the tower looked fresh.

"They painted over it," Wendy said. "Robbie's, like, too mature now to climb back up an' re-do the explosion. Tried to talk Thompson into doin' it, but for a change he turned down a dare."

"I may climb up and do it," Dipper said. "Doesn't look like home without the muffin!"

"Hey, Dip?"

"Yeah?"

"Speakin' of that, I really kinda like the water tower like it was before Robbie decorated it. Uh—just wonderin', dude. You didn't start the guitar just to copy Robbie, did you?"

"No! No, I—just—well, I get lonely and it was, you know, something I wanted to do." They rounded the base of the water tower and then started off on the stretch to the Shack, a long uphill grade, but not a tough one. "Anyway, no, my guitar's not electric, just an acoustic. And I don't play head-banging stuff. 'Oh Susannah' is more my speed."

"Cool. You gotta play for me some time," Wendy said.

"Sure," Dipper told her, his heart beating faster, and not from the run. "Uh, only I—well, I never played for, you know, anybody but my folks and Mabel. Have to practice a little."

"When you're ready, Dip. When you're ready."

The Stanleymobile passed them, Stan honking the horn and Mabel leaning out the passenger window stretching her mouth wide with two fingers and sticking her tongue out.

"She's not growin' up much," Wendy said, laughing.

More seriously, Dipper said, "Yeah, she is. Kinda. She's been depressed."

"Warned ya, it comes with bein' a teen. Acne and angst, man!"

"Yeah. I really think she needs you to talk to. She's started thinking she's too fat."

"Fat? Get out of town! I'd say she's just right for Mabel!"

Dipper was breathing harder now on the slope. "Tell her that. Mom's not much for confiding in. And Mabel's got boy worries, too."

"Yeah, dude, she told me a little bit about this Trey guy. Sounded like a jerk."

"Big-time jerk," Dipper agreed.

After a few moments of silence, Wendy said in a frosty kind of tone, "Mabel told me about Charmaine, too, and some girl named Eloise. What is up with that, dude?"

Dipper stumbled and nearly fell. "What! Did Mabel tell you who Charmaine is?"

"Said you danced with her all night at one of the school dances."

"Three times!" he yelped. "And that—was 'cause—Mabel said—I had to!"

"There's the driveway," Wendy said. "Let's walk it out the rest of the way, cool down."

Gratefully, Dipper slowed to a walk. Then he said, "Charmaine's a French exchange student. Hardly speaks English. She was all alone at the dance, looking miserable. Mabel said I should offer to dance with her, so I did. OK, so she kissed me after the third dance. On the cheek! I've hardly said two words to her since that night. We're not even in any classes together, and that was back in March!"

"I've heard about those French girls," Wendy said ominously. "What about Eloise, huh? You cheatin' on me left an' right, man?"

"Wendy!" Dipper started to explain how he'd toured the haunted Westminster Mystery House, how Eloise was a girl his age with a strange gift of second sight, and how the tour guide had told everybody to hold hands—and then he realized Wendy was chuckling. "You're putting me on," he said, relieved.

"Yeah, for sure, dude," Wendy said. They had reached the curve in the drive, just out of view of both road and house. "C'mere."

They hugged and exchanged a kiss. "Man," she said as they walked toward the Mystery Shack holding hands. "You are gettin' so tall! I bet I don't have six inches on you now." Then, very unexpectedly, she reached down and briefly grabbed his hip. "An' Mabel was right about that butt!"

"Don't!" he pleaded, squirming. "You're gonna get me all—I won't be in shape to go inside."

She laughed again. "Sorry, man."

The Stanleymobile had been parked next to Soos's Jeep, the trunk lid still open. As they passed, Dipper saw that all the luggage was gone, so he slammed the lid down. They went in through the gift shop, and Dipper noticed that the new snack bar adjoining it, sort of a mini-fast food restaurant, looked ready for business. "How's that workin' out?" he asked Wendy.

"Soos hired a short-order cook, an' Abuelita helps, too. Even with the extra paycheck goin' to the cook, Soos says they're sellin' enough burgers and hot dogs to make a little profit on it. Better, the tourists hang around through the lunch hour now an' buy more junk. Been a good spring. Hi, everybody!"

The Ramirez family sat at the breakfast table, and Mabel and Stan shared it with them. "Hey!" Dipper said. "Look at Little Soos! He's growin', man!"

"Dah," the six-month-old said. Melody cuddled him, and he grinned like Soos (but toothlessly), though he had his mother's eyes, and a little tuft of hair had sprouted on top of his head that was nearly the same color as Melody's.

"See!" Soos exclaimed with excitement. "Hey, Dip, I was tellin' everybody, he's talkin! He called you 'dawg,' dawg!"

"Oh, Soos, he said 'dah,'" Mabel told him. "The same way he said 'goo' earlier and you said he was calling me 'girl!'"

"Well, he's tryin' an' junk!" Soos said. "He can, like, crawl! Well, sorta drag himself along, but he moves. An' he's eatin' some baby food now!" He turned to the baby, cooing and chuckling in Melody's lap. "Dawg, you like sweet potatoes, don't you!"

The baby gurgled and laughed.

"He's a real genius," Stan said, not sounding sarcastic. Well, not very.

"Hello," Abuelita said to Dipper. "My, you have grown. I am so glad you do not grease your hair any longer. You have breakfast now?"

Dipper smiled. "Thanks. I want to take a quick shower and change first, though."

"I call the shower after you, man!" Wendy told him. "Hey, Stan, you remember to bring my overnight bag?"

"It's in my room," Mabel told her. "What do you want to eat? I'll cook it!" She pushed back her empty plate, which had traces of pancakes, turkey bacon, and syrup.

"Thanks, Mabes. Just cereal's fine," Wendy said, settling in a chair next to Mabel. "Those wheat flakes if there are any, nothin' sweet. Coffee, please."

Dipper went up the stairs to the attic and for a moment just stood in the bedroom doorway, smiling. Everything looked, everything felt so right. Just the way he remembered it. The way it should be.

His suitcase, duffel, and guitar case had been set on the bed. He opened the duffel, took out the trapper's hat and some clothes for himself—cargo pants, not shorts, and a T-shirt in royal blue with "Piedmont High" on the front—the track team's name—and also underpants and socks. He took a quick shower, sprayed on some deodorant—huh, his armpits were really hairy now—and then wondered if he'd used too much.

With a wet washcloth, he removed some, then did one cautious spritz per pit. He didn't want to smell sweaty, the way he used to when he hated bathing—and yet he didn't want to smell the way Robbie used to at his age, as Mabel said "as if somebody had stirred together anger, hormones, and a gallon of body spray."

"Man," he told his reflection as he set down the deodorant, "I really am a teen!"

But at least, like Mabel he'd never had a terrible case of acne—just two or three occasional spots and zits now and then. He rubbed his chin. Might be time to shave again, though it had only been three days. Eh, it was just a little scattered stubble.

He dressed and went downstairs. Wendy was laughing about something and had just pushed her cereal bowl back. "Upstairs shower's yours," Dipper said.

"Thanks, man. Hey, school shirt?"

"Um—yeah. Track team wears them," Dipper said.

Soos looked excited. "Yeah, dude, Wendy was just tellin' us you're like the champion of the world or something? And you an' Ford, like, are authors and junk? Man, I know somebody famous!"

Wendy got up and said, "Take my chair, Dip. What do you want? I'll get it."

"Uh, thanks! Same cereal you had's fine," Dipper said. "And about half a cup of coffee? With milk?"

"Whoa!" Wendy said. "Coffee! You won't be trippin' on it, will you?"

"Don't think so. Not after just a couple hours of sleep!" Dipper said.

Mabel made a puff of dismissal. In her most mature tone, she said, "Wendy, please, we started drinking coffee months ago."

"Yeah, but Mom limits her to half a cup a day," Dipper said. "So I take just half a cup, too."

"Just 'cause when I had a whole cup I tried to start a flash dance in home room when we got to school!" Mabel exclaimed.

"Yeah, but that didn't work out so good. So I'll only risk half a cup, too. For the time being," Dipper said.

"Coffee's gotta be an improvement over Mabel Juice," Stan rumbled.

"Hey, I gotta go play with Waddles and Widdles!" Mabel said, jumping up. "Later, guys!" She raced out, and the back door banged behind her.

"Thanks, Wendy. I'm surprised she could wait this long," Dipper said as the redhead set a bowl full of Wheaty Crunch down for him.

Wendy said, "She didn't. She told me that she'd already said hello to them and that they were rejoicing in a—what was it? A porcine way."

"Yeah, she's all about vocabulary lately," Dipper said. He poured milk into the bowl of cereal as Wendy set down his coffee cup.

"Gonna shower an' dress," Wendy said. "Then I guess I better get home. No tellin' what my dad and brothers have done to the place!"

"Dude," Soos said, "remember to bring your new badge in to work tomorrow."

"And I have something to give you before you leave," Dipper said. He had stuck the trapper's hat in his belt.

"Oh, I won't forget," Wendy said to Soos. "Back in a few."

Dipper heard her go back to Mabel's room, the guest room that Soos had added a year previously. "New badge?" he asked Soos.

Soos smiled like a beaver spotting a tasty tree. "Yeah, dawg. Wendy got, like, a promotion? She's the Assistant Manager now."

"Wow! She didn't tell me!" Dipper said.

Stan shrugged. "Meh, she still does the same job she never useta do for me. The title's just Soos's excuse to pay her more for goofin' off."

He didn't look upset, though. Though he and Stanford still technically owned the Mystery Shack, they took no money from it, other than a token dollar-a-year rental from Soos. That let Soos plow about half the profits—and they were mounting up—into improving and building onto the Shack. As for Stan and Ford, they had more than enough to get by on, Ford on a constant and substantial income from his patents, Stan—well, he made some money gambling, some promoting social functions, concerts, and dances, and he had yet another source that he wouldn't talk about until the statute of limitations expired. The two Pines brothers lived very comfortably, at any rate.

Dipper felt impressed that Soos could make the improvements he did while maintaining the impression that the Mystery Shack was a shambles. The red "S" on the roof sign, for example, remained permanently fallen. Soos had even nailed it into place up there, though he had re-shingled the roof.

However, he had also carefully re-sodded the moss that grew on the shingles.

Inside, the floors now lay smooth and solid, with no more warped boards. The stairs to the attic stood sound, not half-broken, though Soos had worked hard to preserve the creaks. He'd made the Shack better, sturdier, and yet—it still looked and felt like the Shack.

"Soos," Dipper said, "you're a good boss and a great manager. And a fine Mr. Mystery!"

"Aw, dawg!" Soos said. "I learned from the best."

Stan lifted his coffee cup. "Now, I will drink to that!"

Dipper lifted his own cup, half milk, half coffee. "To Soos!" he said. "The Handyman of the Apocalypse!"

"Aw, dude, you like remembered or some junk!" Soos said. He grinned and added in a wistful tone, "I only wish somebody really had written some folk songs about all that."

Dipper thought of his guitar up in the attic.

"There's still time, man," he said. "Maybe somebody will."

* * *

**Chapter 2**

"So . . . here you go," Dipper said, standing on the front porch of the Shack and reaching over to put the trapper hat on Wendy. He couldn't help smiling like a kid on Christmas morning. "Sweet. Now you look like my Lumberjack Girl again."

She popped his trucker hat onto him and tilted it at a rakish angle. "And now you're the old Dipper. 'Cept taller and broader in the shoulders."

" _And_ with a firmer butt!" Mabel called from the side yard. "Am I right, friends?" Waddles and Widdles oinked agreement, or at least oinked.

"Mabel!" Dipper said.

She peeped around the corner, her grin, now brighter and without braces, shining. "Go on and smooch her, Brobro!" she urged. "Grunkle Stan's got the engine running. She has to go!"

"I wouldn't mind a little smooch," Wendy said with her lovely, slightly lopsided smile, and so they gave each other a little peck on the lips, a token of—Dipper hoped—more to come.

"Hey," he said, walking her to the car, "you try to get some rest."

"You too, Dip. 'Cuz I'll be over tomorrow at seven-thirty for our workout and run!"

"Oh, man! But OK, it's a date," he said, opening the car door for her. "Until then, Assistant Manager Corduroy."

"Such a gentleman!" Stan said from behind the wheel. "Hey, Wendy, I tossed your overnight bag in the backseat. Don't let me drive off an' forget to let you get it out."

"I'll remind you," Wendy said. "OK, Stan, let's go see if my brothers burned down Casa Catastrophe while I was gone."

Dipper closed the car door and waved as Stan drove her away.

Soos, Melody, Abuelita, and the baby took off for Mass about eight-fifteen, and Mabel, who never seemed to run down, said she was going to get some exercise with her pigs, so Dipper went up to the attic.

He didn't go to his room, but sat on the window seat—the one from which he'd spied on Mabel and "Norman" the Gnome-man back early in the kids' first summer in Gravity Falls—and wondered again why the stained glass had been laid in that faintly creepy pattern that resembled a more colorful Bill Cipher.

He'd brought a few books from home, including a used paperback he'd tracked down online, published in 1988. It was thick, the pages yellowed, the black-and-white photos inside grainy halftones, like old newspaper pictures. You sometimes had to read the captions to know what they showed.

The book was by Carleton Fitzthurbert: _Where the Ghosts Live: The History, Legend, and Lore of the Westminster Mystery House._

Dipper had visited the haunted mansion in San Jose and had confronted a creature that Ford later identified as a lich—an Undead, like a zombie in that it was an animated corpse, but unlike one in that it had a cold, malevolent, dangerous intelligence and considerable magical powers. In the end, the lich had collapsed into a heap of bones and dust as the spirit within it passed on—or at least Dipper thought it had and hoped it had.

Because the adventure left him with a sense of failure. He'd guessed wrong, made bad moves, put the girl Eloise in danger—though unknowingly—and only by a last-minute and desperate inspiration had he been able to tag the lich with the item that dragged its soul, and not his own, from its body and into the Beyond.

Worse than all that, the creature's insane, enduring evil had apparently lingered behind it and had infected the timbers and bricks of the house. The house itself had tried to kill him and Eloise. He felt sure of that.

And now Ford was down there in San Jose investigating. The old, crazy mansion was a tourist attraction, like the Mystery Shack ("but with class"). However, since the earthquake—really more the upheavals of a sinister sentient house—and the discovery of a previously concealed ballroom and the bones of the lich scattered inside it, the place had been closed for safety inspections and repairs. Somehow Ford had talked his way in.

And Dipper desperately hoped he would be lucky and smart enough to get out again whole, sane, and safe.

Just in case, he was studying what was known about the Westminster place. With the yellow-tinted light streaming through the stained glass, Dipper pulled his knees up, leaned against the wall to the left of the window, and read the old paperback, sometimes having to hold fragile, loose pages in place with his thumb as they threatened to separate from the spine. Carleton Fitzthurbert's writing style sometimes plodded along but more often broke into overheated purple prose:

_Those caretakers and preservationists who labor within the doleful walls of the Westminster Mansion avouch, nay, even swear, that the preternatural visions of souls who should have passed long since have burst upon their optics even in broad daylight, though to be sure they emerge in thronging numbers especially after sunset, and most of all as the Witching Hour draws nigh. Many, but not all, of these specters bear ghastly wounds, the evidence of Eben Westminster's handiwork in designing rifles and ammunition that killed in its thousands both with dreadful ease and gruesome wounds._

_One is a Plains Indian chieftain, half of whose head is a gore-shattered crater. . . .,_

"I could write a better book than this," Dipper muttered.

When the style cooled down a little and the author began to write about the history of the house, he began to feel drowsy. A whole chapter unfolded the story of the enormous farm that once had stood on the land where Eben's widow—except Dipper knew that in reality it probably was Eben himself, in ghostly disguise—had decided to build the house.

Fitzthurbert suggested that the ground itself might be responsible for the haunting:

_According to the Spanish missionaries, the indigenous Costanoan peoples spoke in their hushed legends of the accursed place, whence none would willingly venture. Though no contemporaneous maps exist, indications are that the site these early natives of America dreaded and feared might well be the very land upon which the Westminster house came to be erected._

_Certain it is that the rancho established there around the year 1775 by Don Alonzo de Vega y Molina never prospered, unlike all of its neighbors. The cattle died of a murrain, no matter how healthy the stock; the sheep would be found dead in the field, with strange mutilations wrought upon their corpses; and within ten years of the Vega family's settling the place, the whole of Don Alonzo's family, his wife and six children, two grown, had all died of a mysterious pestilence. Only old Don Alonzo survived, finally succumbing in 1803 a reclusive, embittered old man._

Dipper frowned. Grunkle Ford told him that some sites naturally attracted supernatural forces and mysteries. One was in Indiana, another near the Arctic Circle, and this place near San Jose—well, this might be another of the uncanny places of Earth.

Of course, at least in Dipper's opinion, the most mysterious of them all was right here in Gravity Falls. And the Mystery Shack stood right in the heart of it.

Fitzthurbert went into considerable dull detail about how the land first occupied by Don Alonzo had descended to others, being taken to pieces gradually as the government took it over (he had no heirs) and subdivided it, until finally hundreds of acres of it again became a dairy farm in the 1860s—one that similarly failed to prosper.

Dipper yawned, closed his eyes for a minute, and opened them three hours later. The book had fallen to the floor, a couple of pages spilling out. His neck had cramped, and he got up, limped from the window seat into the attic bedroom—the run was partly to blame, but also he had sat for too long in a bad posture—and carefully replaced the pages and put the tattered old paperback book onto the table he used as a desk.

He heard the stir of people downstairs and came down to find Abuelita preparing a bountiful lunch: Elote, or roasted corn, with a scramble of steak and blistered tomatoes sprinkled over with goat cheese. Together with her home-made tortillas and cheese-sprinked _fritos refritos,_ these were scrumptious, as he remembered very well.

"Hey, dawg!" Soos said cheerfully as he helped Melody set the table. "I came upstairs an' saw you were, like, snoozing or somethin', so I didn't want to wake you, but since you're awake, want some lunch?"

"Sounds great," Dipper said. "Mabel still outside?"

"Yeah, we saw her with her pigs when we got back from church. You want to go round her up? It'll be ready in a couple minutes."

"Sure thing."

Dipper went out into the backyard. Soos had built a house for Waddles and his daughter, a sturdy little near-replica of the Mystery Shack, shielded from the Shack by a grove of young trees to give the pigs some privacy. Passing it, Dipper saw that he had also put a fence around the Bottomless Pit—one that would let tourists go close enough to toss things in if they wanted, but probably would keep Little Soos from tumbling over the edge once he grew big enough to toddle.

"Good work, Soos," Dipper murmured as he skirted the new fence. He remembered how when a human fell into the Pit he or she was doomed. Doomed to twenty-two minutes of utter boredom until somehow they fell back out again.

Of course, most people who fell in might do so alone and all by themselves. They wouldn't have to listen to stories made up by Grunkle Stan, Soos, and Mabel. Maybe they could take a short nap or something—falling through the air was oddly comfortable, unless you hit something solid at the end of it.

"Hey, Mabel!" Dipper yelled, "where are you?"

He heard some oinks from the trail that led to the bonfire clearing, so he headed that way. He came around the bend and saw Mabel sitting on the log, talking to a guy—a boy about their age whom Dipper didn't know. He wore a tawny-red shirt and khaki jeans with white sneakers, and he was a redhead, too—not quite the shade of Wendy's hair, but coppery in the sunshine.

He rose with a smooth, catlike grace, said something to Mabel, and hurried down the trail, glancing back to wave at her. Dipper heard her say, "Do you really have to go?" If the boy replied, he didn't catch what he said.

"Hey, Mabel," Dipper said, "Abuelita's made one of her Mexican specialties. Come on in to lunch."

"You ruined everything," Mabel complained, getting to her feet and dusting off the seat of her skirt. "Just as I was getting to know Russ, you showed up and scared him away."

"Scared him away?" Dipper asked. "Hey, I just came to find you! The guy could've eaten with us if he wanted to! Who is he, anyway?"

Mabel looked pouty. "His name is Russ, and he's dreamy. He's got the prettiest chestnut-brown eyes. And I know his nose is a little sharp and his face is a little thin, but that just makes him intriguing! He was telling me his folks live up the hill."

"Up this hill?" Dipper turned and gazed at the heavy forest. If you went that way, you eventually came to the place where a few woodpecker-trap trees grew. But someone lived there? He asked, "Where? There's no houses between here and the bluffs. No roads, either."

"Well, there must be, 'cause he said they live back up there somewhere. He heard Waddles and Widdles oinking and came to see what they were doing, and he found me and we sat there on the log, and talked and talked—oh, Dipper, I think I'm in love!"

He stared at her. "Yoooouuu . . . must have sat there a really long time," Dipper said as they and the pigs started back down the trail.

In her swept-away-by-romance whisper, Mabel sighed, "What is time to someone who's in love?"

 _Here we go again._ Trying not to sound harsh, Dipper said, "Mabel, you hardly know this guy! At least wait until you're sure he's not, like, a pile of Gnomes or something!"

She popped him on the arm, but not hard. "You're just mean."

"I'm not trying to be! Come on, Sis! I'm only telling you to go easy. Don't repeat past mistakes."

Mabel sighed, rubbing her left elbow with her right hand. "I know, I know. But he was so fascinating, Dipper! He knows about all the animals of the woods—deer and raccoons and possums, sure, but also the unicorns! He didn't laugh or make fun of me when I mentioned them. And he's seen the Gremloblin before, too. And he even asked if I knew the Shack was built so close to an old cemetery, except he called it 'burying place.' Ha! I promised to tell him the story about our big karaoke party some time!"

Dipper felt good to see the old Mabel back again, and yet—"Well, go slow. I don't want you to get all heartbroken over this guy. And anyhow, remember this is only our first day. You still have lots of time left in the summer."

Mabel kicked a mushroom, which flew about ten feet. A Gnome ran out and fielded it, then scurried back into the underbrush. Gnomes loved mushrooms, but for some reason hated to pick them. If you want to make a lifelong friend of a Gnome, bring him or her a basket full of fresh mushrooms. Of course, after about twenty minutes of constant companionship from a typical Gnome, you'll probably wish you'd brought death-cap amanita 'shrooms or some other poisonous ones.

Mabel grumbled, "Yeah, I know, but—you got Wendy, Grunkle Stan even has Sheila—"

"Wait, what? Is that still going on?"

"Yeah, Bro! You don't listen! Stan talked about her when he was driving us over from Portland. 'Course you were in the backseat with Wendy—" She broke off and then said, "I'm sorry, Dip. I don't mean to sound all bitter, and I'm glad that you two have each other. It's just that seeing how happy you are, I feel like I'm an outsider, all fifth-wheely and depressed."

"Mabel, Wendy and I aren't exactly engaged. We're still in that good-buddies-hanging-out zone, you know?"

Mabel shoved him playfully. "Good buddies and smooch pals! Plus, you slept with her!"

"I slept _beside_ her!" Dipper said. "We just fell asleep on the floor watching TV, and nothing happened! Except you took pictures of our bare feet for some weird reason."

Mabel's mood changed like the weather in Seattle: "Oooh, they were so _cute!_ Your toes and hers almost touching! One of those is my favorite photo ever. Mm, what's that smell?"

"Abuelita made a great lunch," Dipper said. "Told you."

They had come within sight of the Shack, and the two pigs had grunted their way into their house. Mabel started to walk faster. "Now I'm hungry!"

"Hey, Mabel," Dipper said as they got to the back porch, "How about introducing me to Russ next time? Tell him I don't bite."

"Oh, he's not scared of you," Mabel said. "Just shy, I think."

As she opened the door, Dipper, right behind her, thought, but wisely didn't say, _Yeah, maybe he's shy. I'm sure he's not up to no good. Yeah, right._

**Chapter 3**

**From the Journals of Dipper Pines:** _Sunday night, June 8, 2014: Here I am again, sitting up in bed in my attic bedroom at the Shack, with the lantern on and Journal 2 open on my lap desk, scribbling away._

_It feels incredibly good to be back in Gravity Falls! Everything between me and Wendy is going smoothly, Soos is as kind and goofy as ever, Abuelita's meals are great, Melody's sweet, and the baby is cheerful and funny. If only Mabel would settle down._

_I mean, sure, guys going through adolescence have mood swings. I know that real well. But girls must do it too. One minute Mabel's singing and dancing around, the next she's all drooped over in a corner obsessing about boys in her life. Or the lack of them. I don't know, maybe this guy she met might be OK. I'll have to meet him, I guess._

_Russ, so I guess his name is Russel? I don't think Mabel even knows. From my short glimpse of him, he sure looks like somebody from Gravity Falls! A skinny, coppery-haired kid, not tall at all but looking tall because he's so kind of thin and stretched. Mabel wouldn't talk much about him except to say his folks sounded like survivalists or "hippies" or something. Grunkle Stan once told me that the woods are full of hippies whose hippie parents and grandparents came here, like, fifty years ago and dropped out and found places to stay and started hippie families._

_I don't really think that's true, because I would have seen some of them when exploring the woods. But, whatever. I need to find some way to be nice to Mabel. I thought I was really having a rough time all spring, but it's been hard for her, too. Losing her favorite teacher and all. And she hasn't said a word of complaint about this, but when Dad clipped the sports-page stories (well, really three or four short paragraphs from the papers that happened to list my wins) about the track meets and put them up on the fridge, it must've made her feel like she was being overlooked. Dad's always put her art up there, but never once anything about me before._

_Before this year, I never thought much about it, but Mom's always been partial to me, for some reason. And Mabel's been Dad's girl. Huh. Weird._

_So anyhow, here I am, and already I'm starting to worry. I tried to call Ford twice this afternoon and got his voice mail. I'd text him, but I'm not sure he even understands what texting is. Grunkle Stan says when Ford went through the portal, phones had to be connected to the wall by a cord and you couldn't write messages on them like some fershlugginer pocket-sized Western Union office._

_Something tells me Stan's not exactly up to date, either. But anyway, Stan tried to reassure me, telling me that Ford only turns his cell phone on when he wants to make a call. He thinks the batteries will die in an hour or so if it's constantly on. Maybe when he gets back from San Jose I can offer him a tutorial on how cell phones work and bring him up to speed on modern battery technology._

_OK, so Stan says he called the motel where Ford's staying down there in San Jose, and the people at the desk said Ford's in and out and keeps late hours and leaves early. They'd seen him this morning, so he was OK then. Stan left a message with the hotel operator for him, so maybe he'll call tomorrow._

_If he doesn't, I'm going to ask Grunkle Stan to go down there with me and check up on Ford. That house is dangerous, I feel that in my bones. Ford may need more help than he thinks he does._

_Practiced the guitar for about an hour. I was so pumped in the spring, but now don't know if I can go through with this. When I think of playing for Wendy, I get all clenched up inside and I can't even play chords in the right order. Having a little trouble getting used to using my pinky, too. I'm gonna try, though. Practice, practice, practice._

_Getting late. Going to turn in. Note to self for tomorrow: Find some way to be nice to Mabel. She needs it._

* * *

Dipper slept sound that night, without any dreams that he could remember, but he woke with a start from someone shaking him. "Dipper! Get up, dude!"

"Huh?" He jerked awake and gasped. "Wendy!"

"Dude, it's time for our run. Didja forget?" In the pale light of early morning, she was grinning down at him.

Dipper swung out of bed, then remembered he was wearing only his shirt and a pair of tighty-whitey undershorts. He hastily tugged the sheet over him. "Dang, I forgot to set the alarm last night. Uh, you could've knocked, Wendy. I might not have been decent."

"Well," she said with a big smile and a waggle of her eyebrows, "a girl can always hope! Give you three minutes, Dip. Meet me in the side yard!" She left him, and he made a hasty bathroom visit, then changed into his running shorts, shirt, and trainers. He hadn't yet unpacked and couldn't find a sweatband, so he tugged on the pine-tree hat.

They did their exercise routine, then set off on one of their favorite running routes, the one that led down the sight-seeing track, then on a footpath leading over rolling hills, in and out of woodland, alongside a creek, and around the perfectly circular Moontrap Pond.

They didn't talk very much. Natural sounds filled the world around them: woodpeckers deep in the forest already at work drumming up business, crows in creekside treetops complaining as the two ran along the springy marsh-side track that they were disturbing the peats, the zizz of dragonflies hawking for mosquitoes flitting home drunk on blood. The teens startled a fox drinking on the far edge of the pond, and Dipper saw its head snap up, ears pointed heavenward for an instant before it ducked down and vanished into tall grass, like a magician's trick.

An untidy skein of geese flew high overhead, their light-gray breasts shining in the morning sun as one of them kept up a constant _whonk-whonk-whonk!_ Wendy yelled upward: "That's it, dude, whip 'em into formation!"

All through this the teens didn't slow, though, and they made their turn at the Lonesome Man, a slender six-foot tall stone that stood in the middle of a flat grassy space.

Wendy had told Dipper that, according to her dad, a thousand years ago a Paiute chieftain married a woman from a Chinook tribe. She left him on their wedding night, and he pursued her under a full moon. As he ran, he asked the moon to give her back to him. Ahead of him and losing ground, she asked it to stop him. The moon heard her and changed the running man into a stone, upright but leaning forward because it caught him in mid-stride as he ran. And there he stands for all eternity, yearning toward the place where he had last seen his lost bride.

It was a nice story, but Dipper felt sure that really the Native Americans had raised the stone for some ceremonial purpose of their own. He thought that one day he'd come out and examine it.

For the time being, though, it was just a convenient spot to turn and backtrack along the path, making their total run back to the bonfire clearing exactly four miles, counting by Wendy's pedometer. As usual, when they passed the bonfire log, they slowed to a cool-off walk and held hands the rest of the way. Dipper told Wendy that he wanted to cheer Mabel up, and why, and Wendy said, "That's a good idea, dude. Let's hope she didn't get up super-early and take off already."

She hadn't, because they heard her voice when they walked back into the Shack. To save time, Wendy took the downstairs shower next to the guest room, and Dipper showered and dressed upstairs in the attic bathroom. He opened the bedroom closet to toss his sweaty running togs into the hamper—"How's it hangin', Invisible Wizard?" he asked, a ritual whenever he opened the closet door. He didn't know what he'd do if he ever actually got an answer.

He picked up his laptop and a cable and hurried downstairs. Mabel, carrying a couple of plates to the breakfast table, said, "Scrambled eggs and waffles today, Brobro!"

"Great," Dipper said. He went to the kitchen and got himself and Wendy plates, loaded them with waffles and a couple of scoops of egg, and put them on the table. Melody and Little Soos had just settled in, and Abuelita followed Dipper with two cups of coffee.

"One with milk for you," she said. "The good one for Wendy."

"Thanks," Dipper said, setting the black coffee next to the plate he'd brought for Wendy. "Where's Soos?"

"Oh, he has already eaten," Melody said. "But he will be down the stairs in just a minute."

Wendy came in, fresh from her shower, in her usual flannel shirt, jeans, and trapper's hat. But on her chest a gold badge gleamed. "Check it out!" she said, pointing with both hands. "Assistant Manager!"

"Cool!" Mabel said through a mouthful of waffles, syrup, and egg. Soos came downstairs a second later—they heard him: "Walkin' down the stairs, do-ta-do-ta-do"—and then came in, kissed his wife on the cheek and his son on the top of his head, and said, "Mornin', dawgs!"

"OK," Dipper said, having shoveled his food down nearly as fast as Mabel could have done. "Now that everybody's here, I have something to show you. Uh—just a second."

He had to patch his laptop into the flat-screen TV that Soos had bought to replace Stan's antique set, the one with the deluxe coat-hanger antenna. He swiveled the set. "Can everybody see? OK? Watch now!" He punched a command into the laptop keyboard, and the TV came to life.

Mabel gasped. "What are you doing, Dipper?"

On screen, a still picture of a humorous-looking, attractive gray-haired lady had appeared. She beamed from the monitor.

"Everybody, this is Mrs. Elizabeth Pepper," Dipper said. "Last year she was Mabel's art teacher and her favorite teacher of all time."

"Dipper, I was so happy, and now—" Mabel said, shrinking back into her seat.

"But Mrs. Pepper passed away suddenly in the spring," Dipper went on. "This would have been her last yearbook photo. Turned out that everyone who had taken Mrs. Pepper's classes loved her a lot. So, Mabel decided she needed a memorial. Watch this."

It was the video that the school had shot of Mabel's presentation to the assembly. As the principal and Mabel spoke warmly of Mrs. Pepper, Melody sniffled a little. The video ended as it froze on the portrait of her teacher that Mabel had created, now hanging on the wall of the school's entrance hall.

"OK, so look at this," Dipper said. He changed to a high-res image of the portrait.

The picture zoomed in, and the lifelike picture began to break up into what first looked like dots, but then became tiny photos of thousands of people. "All these are hundreds and hundreds of former and current students who'd had Mrs. Pepper in school. This is her eye," Dipper said. "And right here—wearing the white sweater—this is Mabel, see? In the portrait, she's the twinkle in Mrs. Pepper's eye." He zoomed back out to the realistic portrayal of Mrs. Pepper. "And my sister Mabel did this wonderful thing," he said proudly.

"Oh, Mabel! That's so beautiful!" Wendy said, reaching across the table to grasp Mabel's hand.

Mabel blinked. "Really? You really think so?"

"Dude, that is like a legendary work of art!" Soos proclaimed, standing up and clapping. "Good for you, Mabel!"

Abuelita blew her nose. " _Oh! Ella es tan hermosa!_ " she said, and she moved from her chair to hug Mabel. "You will have wings in heaven!" she said.

"Dude, she says that your picture is like rad beautiful," Soos said helpfully.

Mabel smiled, shyly at first, and then with genuine pleasure. "She made such a difference in so many people's lives. I just wanted everyone to remember Mrs. Pepper always," she said in a rusty kind of whisper.

"You did it, Sis," Dipper told her quietly. "And I wanted everyone to know how proud I am of you and show them why."

"Oh, man, girl!" Soos said, jumping up from his seat again. "I, like, totally get it now! A teacher is part of all her students' lives, right? Anyway, that's what I get out of it. Good goin', Hambone. It's a beautiful picture and it makes people, like, think, even! You did good."

After breakfast, Dipper and Mabel volunteered to wash up. Abuelita had to prepare the supplies for the little fast-food snack bar, Melody tidied the Museum, Soos and Wendy got the gift shop ready for business, Little Soos sat in his playpen gurgling and burping, and the Mystery Twins stood at the sink, Dipper washing, Mabel drying.

"Dipper," Mabel said, "that was incredibly nice of you."

"Not nearly as nice as what you did for Mrs. Pepper," Dipper said. "And people ought to know how talented you really are." He finished the last of the silverware, rinsed it, and drained the sink. "So what are your plans for today?"

"Oh, I'm gonna get together with Grenda and Candy and sort of decide on the can't-miss-'em events for the summer."

"You're actually making a plan?" Dipper asked with a laugh as he dried his hands. "Who are you, and what have you done with Mabel?"

"Not a listy plan, silly!" she said. "We're gonna look at the calendar of concerts and dances an' stuff, that's all. Oh, and we may call on Pacifica just to see how things are going with her. You know. Girly stuff. How about you?"

"Oh, you know, hang around the Shack, help out at the gift shop if it gets busy."

"Talk to Wendy," Mabel said with a grin.

"Why not?"

"Why not indeed, Mr. Dip-your-toe-into-romance?" she frowned. "That one didn't really sing, did it?"

"They can't all be gems. Have a good day, Sis."

"Yeah, um, you, um, too. Um. Grateful sibling hug?"

"Sure," he said. "I'm grateful for you."

"Same here, Bro," she said. "Same here."

And things went well until after the morning rush. To begin with, Dipper met the new employee, a teen working as a short-order cook. His name was T. K., he said, and he had just turned fifteen. He stood a little taller than Dipper, not as tall as Wendy, and he had big round glasses ( _Harry Potter geek,_ Dipper thought) and a thin, pimply face. The glasses made his eyes look huge, an owl's wondering eyes, and his shock of sandy-brown hair flattened strangely when he covered it with a translucent plastic cap—food-service regulations—and all in all, he gave the impression of a shy and awkward stork that had wandered in.

As he put a tray of hamburger patties into the snack-bar fridge, he said with diffidence, "Uh, 'scuse me, Dipper? Is it? Dipper, um, I wondered, is your sister Mabel the girl that did the big puppet show a couple years back?"

"Yeah," Dipper said. "That didn't work out too well." _Speaking as a temporary puppet,_ he thought.

T.K. blinked. "Huh. It didn't? I thought it was awesome! It was funny and I liked the songs and all. But my mom dragged me out just when the fireworks started, and that was the best part. Tell her I liked it, OK?"

"Yeah, sure," Dipper said. Well, there was no accounting for tastes.

The Shack got very busy—its popularity had spread by word of mouth, and now tour buses pulled through on a regular schedule, and cars full of people sometimes crammed the parking lot and spilled over along the sides of the driveway—and Dipper manned the register while Wendy walked the shop and kept a kind of order among the thundering herds. In the adjoining snack bar, Abuelita took care of the cash register while T.K. cooked burgers, hot dogs, and fries and kept the coffee urn perking.

Things didn't begin to simmer down until after one-thirty, and then in a lull after 2:00, Wendy and Dipper took a break. "Burgers are on the house, Dip," Wendy said.

T.K. made them a couple of tasty ones and then untied his apron. "Busy today," he said. "I actually got about fifty dollars in tips."

"Good for you, man!" Wendy said. "That's more'n I useta get in a week!"

"Thank you, Miss Corduroy. Um is it OK if I, you know, go after I clean up?"

"Sure, dude. Your shift's over. Soon's everything's washed and stored, take off."

Dipper pitched in, and T.K. awkwardly thanked him, punched his glasses back into place on his nose, and hung up his cap and his apron and left. "'Miss Corduroy?' Dipper asked Wendy.

"A good manager deserves respect, dork," she said with a genial smile.

Dipper looked out the window and saw T.K. pedaling a bike down the drive, wobbling as though he lacked either coordination or a sense of balance. "Odd guy," he said.

"Eh, kinda," Wendy agreed. "He got bullied a lot when he was littler. Real shy. Math nerd. His family's kinda poor, but Tick's a good kid. Cooks good, anyway."

"Tick?" Dipper asked.

"Ticknor," Wendy said. "Ticknor Keevan O'Grady. Heck of a name, huh?"

"Yeah," Dipper said. "I can see why that would be awkward for him." He shrugged. "Like 'Mason.' Guess all of guys us with weird names go by nicknames."

"Dude!" Wendy said, giving his shoulder an affectionate shove. "I told you before, you got a perfectly good name. 'Course to me you're Big Dipper." She yawned and took a sip from her rare second cup of coffee.

"Didn't you sleep last night?" Dipper asked.

She yawned again. "Yeah, but woke up so dang early. Coyote or somethin' wailin' off in the woods about two o'clock. You?"

"Like a log," Dipper said. "No bad dreams, even. Only thing is, when I'm not busy, I'm worrying about Grunkle Ford." He took out his phone and touched the speed dial. After a few seconds, he thumbed the phone off. "He's still not answering."

They heard the crunch of gravel from outside, and Dipper leaned back and looked out the window. "The Oregon Trail tourist bus," he said. "Right on time. Looks full, too."

Wendy stood up and went around the counter to put her cup in the sink. "Well-p, break time's over. Wash up for me, Dip?"

"Done," Dipper said, because the cup was the only thing left to wash. It took him fifteen seconds. Then he hung Soos’s CLOSED sign on the snack bar door—HOURS 11 AM – 2 PM, DOGS—and as Mr. Mystery Soos went out to greet the bus, Dipper and Assistant Manager Corduroy got ready for another onslaught of tourists.

* * *

**Chapter 4**

The rest of Monday passed peacefully enough, though nothing particularly exciting happened. Stan called Dipper and said, "My brother the genius gave me like a thirty-second phone call just now, said he was busy examining the whole house with a psychotic kid naked energetic meter or some stupid thing and that it was goin' slow, but he's OK. Asked me to call you."

"Thanks," Dipper said, feeling both relieved that Stan had been in touch with Ford and disappointed that Ford hadn't thought he had time to call Dipper, too. If Ford was scanning for psychic kinetic energy, that meant that at least poltergeist-level activity was still going on in the Westminster house. Maybe an exorcism could resolve the problem. Or maybe not.

Mabel seemed in a better mood. She asked Dipper, "Hey, can we take over the attic Friday night for a sleepover?"

"Who's coming?"

"The usual gang," Mabel said. "Grenda, Candy, Pacifica. Wendy says she can't be there, though. Come on, Dipper! Next time we can go over to Pacifica's, she says."

"Aren't you girls getting old for sleepovers?" he asked.

"Never!"

"OK, OK, sure, we'll swap rooms," he said. Wendy had already invited him over to the Corduroy house that Friday evening for movie night, so he'd miss at least the most raucous part of the girl's socializing. Plus, he probably wouldn't have to have a conversation with Pacifica, whose interactions had a way of turning awkward.

After dinner, while Mabel was again frolicking with her two pigs, Dipper went upstairs, tuned his guitar, and began to strum chords vaguely reminiscent of the old railroad ballad "Casey Jones." When he satisfied himself that he knew the tune, he began to sing the lyrics he had in his head:

* * *

_Come gather round me and you'll hear me tell_

_Of a big, brave dude who struggled through hell_

_The end of the world was called Weirdmageddon,_

_But Soos heard the call and out he was headin'!_

_Our man Soos was big and bold,_

_Not scared of fire nor frightened of cold,_

_Wanderin' the wastelands when things looked grim,_

_And many owe their lives to one guy, him!_

_Handyman Soos!_

_Bringin' men to safety!_

_Handyman Soos!_

_Protecting helpless babes!_

_Handyman Soos!_

_All the ladies love him,_

_They all call him grand,_

_'Cause Handyman Soos was a fix-it-up man!_

* * *

At first Dipper giggled, but then he groaned. "Oh, man! Maybe I should just give up songwriting. It's harder than it seems." He thought fleetingly of Wendy and the very first song he'd ever composed on the guitar—the one for her. _OK, I'll work on this Soos one, and if I can get it sounding halfway decent, I'll play it for him, and if he likes it—but Soos would like anything. I'll probably never get the nerve to play my song for Wendy._

Anyway, he strummed the chords of that one, too, humming the melody, and it didn't sound half as bad as he remembered it. Well, whatever happened, at least his Wendy song didn't have hypnotic suggestions in it and he hadn't ripped it off some death-metal band. He went to bed and read until he fell asleep.

Only to wake up at—he looked blearily at his phone, charging beside the bed—three a.m.? Some noise?

Then he heard it again, a distant high-pitched howl that went on and on, ululating—rising and falling, sounding forlorn. "Coyote," he muttered, remembering that Wendy had mentioned she heard one. He got up to go to the bathroom, and when he came out again, he glanced at the Bill Cipher-like stained-glass window.

Something shapeless fluttered just outside.

Owl? No, it hung in the air but wavered.

Dipper took a step toward the window, and whatever it was either shot away at high speed or else vanished. Curious, he went to the window and opened it. Dark outside—a setting moon lay in an aura of its own light, cast through a high, thin cloud layer, but few stars showed. Nothing. Maybe he'd only seen a reflection or something—

_The far-off howl began again._

Dipper shivered and hastily closed the window. Maybe it was a coyote, off in the hills somewhere, but it sounded so much like a heartbroken woman letting all her grief and anger and fear out in a prolonged, heartbroken, wailing shriek.

"Wow," Dipper whispered. He felt goosebumps on his arms. It was the single weirdest sound he had ever heard in his life.

He started back to his bedroom, and then the pounding began. What the heck? Somebody at the door?

Well, at least he was wearing pajamas this time. He hurried downstairs and met Mabel in her bathrobe and slippers, heading for the side door. "Who is it?" she asked.

"One way to find out." Dipper turned on the outside light and carefully opened the door.

"Russ?" Mabel asked.

Dipper blinked. The boy he'd seen in the bonfire clearing stood there, shielding his eyes from the overhead light. His coppery hair glistened—was it wet? It sure looked that way. He asked, "Mabel, are you all right?" in a thin, light voice.

"Huh? Sure I am, except for being all sleepy! What's wrong?"

The boy's eyes shifted nervously. He did everything but perk up his ears to show how on edge he was. "I had a bad feeling. Is this—your brother Dipper?"

"Yeah. Dipper, this is Russ. We're gonna wake everybody up!"

"Step out in the yard for a bit, then. Please."

"You come in."

Russ squirmed a little, as if caught between a desire to flee and one to stay. "I can't. My folks wouldn't like it. But please, just for a little. Both of you."

Mabel shrugged. "OK."

Dipper walked out right beside her. Russ led the way and stayed a little apart from them, a bit further than most people would have done. They walked through grass wet with dew—Dipper was barefoot, and despite the warm night, the dew felt cold. They went as far as the low fence around the parking lot, where the porch light gave them just enough illumination to see each other. "Listen," Russ said in an urgent tone, "something strange has come into the forest. I think it is coming this way. Promise me you will be careful."

Mabel asked, "About what?"

"I do not know!" the boy said. "Anything strange or unusual!"

"Like being asked to walk out in the yard at three in the morning?" Dipper asked.

Russ shifted from foot to foot, ducking his head. "I am sorry about that. I do not know what to do, and my folks are no help." Russ shivered. "It is there in the forest, looking for something or someone. Have you heard it?"

"Uh-uh," Mabel said, tilting her head in that why you ackin' so cray-cray way she had.

"Wait," Dipper said. "Heard it? You mean like a howl? Like, like a wolf or coyote?"

"Maybe hu—I mean, your ears hear it that way," Russ said. "But believe me, it comes from no living throat." He was so twitchy, stepping from side to side, his head constantly turning as though he feared attack from either side or behind, that Dipper felt a kind of contagious nervousness. "I have known it was there for a few nights. It seems to be coming this way, slowly. I was afraid it might mean you would be hurt. Mabel, I mean."

"A few nights?" Dipper asked. "Howwww did you even know Mabel was going to be here? You never met her before yesterday."

Russ looked downward. "I have seen her before. When she and you walked in the forest. Last summer. I—I liked her from the first. I am afraid for her."

"Well," Dipper said, "you don't have to worry. We'll take care of her."

"Dipper!" Mabel said. "Be nice!"

Keeping his voice low, Dipper said, "Look, I'm sorry, but before yesterday you never even met him, and now he's worried about you?"

"I should go," Russ said.

"No," Mabel insisted.

"Maybe you'd better," Dipper told him. "OK, if you and Mabel want to talk, fine, but please do it in the daytime, OK? It's too creepy at night."

"Cree . . . py?" Russ asked, sounding the way Dipper suspected he himself did in French class, when all the words to him sounded like "ong."

"Yeah, creepy. You know. Scary," Dipper said. "Weird. Not normal."

"You can come and talk to me," Mabel said. "But Dipper's right. Daytime would be better."

"At the log?" Russ asked, hope in his voice. "Near twilight?"

"That will be fine."

"Then I will . . . I’ll come. I'm sorry," Russ said again. "Dipper, Mabel—I can't tell you what the danger is because I don't know, but it smells wrong, it feels wrong. I don't think the . . . the wailer is trying to hurt you. Maybe to warn you. I think . . . I think someone close to this house . . . will die."

Dipper actually felt Mabel shiver. "OK, Russ, you're creeping me out," she said, sounding as if she meant to make a little joke. But she swallowed. "Seriously," she added.

"I will try to learn more." He actually knelt in the grass, his head lowered.

Mabel reached out and ruffled his hair. "Stop it," she said with some affection. "I appreciate you being my knight in shiny armor and all, but this is a little embarrassing."

"I will speak to you again." Then, without even a hint that he was about to do it, Russ surged to his feet and broke into a run.

"Whoa!" Dipper said. Russ leaped the low fence on this side of the parking lot, then the far side, and then he melted into the night shadows beneath the trees. "He's quick off the block! Come on, let's go in. My feet are freezing."

“He just vanished.”

“Into the shadows. There’s something weird about the way he talks, Sis. Did you notice? At first, he wasn’t using contractions, and then when he started he said them oddly. ‘I-yull’ for ‘I’ll,’ and sort of ‘cannut’ for ‘can’t.’ What kind of accent is that?”

“Got me, Brobro,” Mabel confessed. “But funny talker or not, he’s really nice.”

They slipped back inside, Dipper turned off the porch light, and then he locked the door. Double-checked to make sure he'd locked it.

"Lucky nobody else woke up," he whispered to Mabel.

Of course, on this side of the house a great deal of extraneous noise fought a losing battle with Soos's epic-level snoring. Mabel went back to the guest room, and Dipper walked upstairs. His pajama legs were soaked halfway to his knees, or so they felt, anyway. He took the PJ's off, thought of Wendy coming in to shake him awake, and set the alarm app on his phone to pre-empt that.

Lying in bed, he found sleep elusive. Something about what Russ had said—well, assuming the kid wasn't simply crazy. Crazy people seemed common in Gravity Falls, including those who married and divorced woodpeckers and raccoons. Still—the wailer, Russ had said. _Trying to warn us?_

_Wailer?_

"Oh, man," Dipper said, suspicion filling his mind. He turned on the battery-powered lantern, grabbed his laptop, and turned it on. "Come on, come on!" Why wasn't it like in the movies, when the dude switched on a computer and it was already on the Internet?

When the laptop booted, he made sure the wi-fi was working—at least the Shack had a good, strong signal, thanks to Grunkle Stan's splurging on a top-quality modem and router a few years ago.

Dipper opened a browser, then a search engine, and looked for _+wail +warning._ Nothing. Try "omens of death."

Dipper read about corpse candles, the phantom knock (three sharp knocks on a door during the hours of night, and nobody there when someone answered the knocking), a ghostly funeral passing a house in the night. . .. One more try: _"omens of death" +wailing._

And the first item that popped up was "The Wail that Foretells Death: The Banshee."

Dipper had read of banshees before. He even knew they were supposed to be fairies, not the diminutive kind that flitted through a few glens in the Gravity Falls forests, but human-sized, magical creatures. The name came from _bean sidhe,_ an Irish term. Dipper read in the article on his computer that the words meant "woman of the hills," and that the hills were fairy mounds of Ireland. So were banshees fatal?

No, the article said, the banshee wasn't the cause of death. Yes, she forewarned a family with her eerie grieving wail of a coming death in the house, most often the death of the owner.

_The owner._

_Ford had built the Shack as his home!_

"Oh, my gosh!" Dipper grabbed his phone and dialed Ford's number. It rang, but went immediately to voice mail, and not even to personalized voice mail, but the machine announcement "You have reached the number . . . ." Dipper waited for the beep and then said, "Grunkle Ford, if you get this, call me back the minute you do, even if it's the middle of the night. It's a matter of life and death!"

Call the hotel, call the hotel—what hotel was it? Had Grunkle Stan mentioned it? He called Stan instead.

"Yah?" the sleepy voice growled. "This better be good."

"Grunkle Stan, I think Ford's in danger," Dipper told him.

"You got a reason?"

When Dipper explained, Stan sighed and asked, "You got a reason other than a coyote howlin' at the moon?"

"More a feeling," Dipper confessed.

Stan sighed. "OK, Dip, I ain't gonna play dumb. You and I know there are weird things around. Includin' Poindexter himself. Let me call his hotel room."

"Call me right back," Dipper said. "Or have him call me. Please."

"OK, OK."

Dipper couldn't lie still or sit still. He paced the attic, fretting, until his phone rang. Stan again. "Did you get him?" he asked.

"No, sorry, kid. They, uh, they say he checked out before midnight."

"But he's not answering his phone!"

"Don't know what to tell you, Dip."

"We have to go down there."

A pause, and then Stan asked, "You really got a feelin' about this?"

"I wouldn't have bothered you if I didn't."

"Okay, kid. Here's what I'll do. Let me see, let me see . . . . shoulda put on my glasses. Computer's already on, let me see. OK, there's a flight direct to San Jose, California Coastal Air, leaves Portland at eleven a.m. I'll fly down an' collect Braniac. How's that?"

"I want to go too." When Stan hesitated, Dipper said, "Grunkle Stan, I've been to the Westminster house. I've dealt with its ghosts. Please. I can help, I know I can."

"OK, OK," Stan said. "Oy, I hate flyin'! I'll pick you up at the Shack at eight sharp, we'll drive to Portland and see if we can catch the plane, go and see what trouble Ford's got himself into. That satisfy you?"

"Yeah, thanks. Is there an earlier flight?"

"Naw, couple leave earlier, but these other airlines, you gotta make connections. This one's the fastest to get there. Scheduled to take off at eleven-eleven, gets to San Jose at twelve fifty-one. Half an hour faster than the next best choice. Lemme see. Not half full yet, so we'll grab the tickets at the airport, that'll be easiest. Be ready! Be sure to bring your school ID, and if you don’t got that, your passport. Better pack a couple changes of underwear, I guess. It may take us a while to find him."

"I'll be ready."

It was close to four. He lay in bed muttering, "Please be OK, please be OK, please be OK" until he fell asleep.

He woke with fear clenching his throat—but the sound wasn't a banshee, but the alarm tone on his phone. Dipper turned it off, knowing he was going to be a nervous wreck.

But Wendy would be there in ten minutes. The run would keep him occupied. If he could just hold in his anxiety, not alarm her.

He got dressed for the run, knowing he was going to dread every moment of the morning until Stan showed up.

And then he had to survive Stan's driving all the way to Portland.

* * *

**Chapter 5**

**From the Journals of Dipper Pines:** _Tuesday, June 10—I thought I was doing a good job not letting Wendy know about all that happened last night, I mean the howling and Russ visiting and all, but after our run, as we were doing our cool-off walk down the drive, she asked, "So, Dipper, what's worryin' you?"_

_"I didn't think it showed," I said._

_She punched my shoulder. "C'mon, man! We're somehow gettin' this spooky ESP thing. I can, like, feel when you're not right. Spill it, dude."_

_"OK," I said. I could hear Mabel out back putting her pigs through some kind of obstacle course—"Work that fat off! Work it!" she was barking._

_"Can we just sit on the porch for a minute?" I asked._

_We settled on the edge of the porch, facing the totem pole, and I told her about the eerie noise, the strange visit, and the ominous fact that we couldn't get in touch with Ford. "I tried to call him already this morning," I said. "No answer."_

_"Dude, I can understand why you're worried," Wendy said._

_"So Grunkle Stan and I are gonna fly down to San Jose and see if we can track him down," I finished. "This morning. Stan will be here in about twenty minutes."_

_She suddenly hugged me. "You be careful, Dipper," she said. "I've heard about the banshee's wail. Not that I believe in stuff like that, but—this is Gravity Falls, man."_

_"Yeah."_

_We showered and had a real quick breakfast and Wendy got to work in the Shack. I stayed there with her until Grunkle Stan showed up a couple of minutes before 8:00, and then I gave her a quick peck of a goodbye kiss and promised to call her when we got to San Jose._

_I grabbed my duffel with a change of clothes and a couple of changes of underwear in it and ran out to the Stanleymobile. Stan had just climbed out from behind the wheel. "Ya ready?" he asked._

_I opened the passenger door and tossed the duffel bag over into the backseat. "Let's do this."_

_"OK. I tried callin' Ford—"_

_"So did I."_

_"Then you know he ain't answerin'."_

_Grunkle Stan sped north to Interstate 84 because he said we'd make better time that way. We didn't talk much. I tried another time to call Grunkle Ford when we were about halfway to Portland, same result._

_We got to the airport right around 9:40, found a parking spot—"Twelve bucks a day, what am I, made of money?" Grunkle Stan groused._

_We rushed to the terminal, because we hadn't yet bought tickets—Grunkle Stan had checked that morning, and he said there were still thirty or so seats open, though, so it wouldn't be a problem—and as we went toward the airline desk—_

* * *

Stan stopped in his tracks and yelled, "For the love of—what're _you_ doin' here?"

And Stanford, burdened down with a suitcase in each hand, stopped and asked, "Stanley? Why are you here? Hello, Dipper. Hey!"

Dipper had run forward and hugged him, causing Ford to drop his luggage. "Grunkle Ford! We've been so worried about you! You never answered your phone—"

"Because the battery died!" Ford said, pushing Dipper away and looking baffled. "And the front desk at the motel didn't sell this kind of battery!"

"Ya don't buy new ones! Told ya, Brainiac, you gotta plug in it an' recharge it," Stan growled.

"But I forgot the charging cord!"

"Doesn't matter, doesn't matter," Dipper said, grabbing both suitcases. "We came to drive you home! Let's go!"

"Uh—oh. Very well. Thank you."

Though Stan dickered with the parking lot attendant, arguing that anything under fifteen minutes ought to be free, finally Ford paid the two dollars and they set off for home. "What happened at the Westminster House?" Dipper asked.

Sitting beside him in the shotgun position, Ford said, "Well, I did a full-scale psychoactive scan of the entire house, including the hidden room you spoke of, where the bones of Mr. Westminster were found—by the way, did you break that hole in the wall?"

"Had to," Dipper said. "The only other way out was like fifteen feet over our heads, a trap door in the stairs or something. So, I found a place where there'd been a window, and all we had to do was break through the scantlings and plaster."

Ford nodded. "Fortunately, no one has any idea that a guest caused that breakage. The staff attribute it to earthquake damage and settling," Ford said. "The room is supposedly off-limits for the time being. But I crawled in through the opening you made anyway. I've rarely seen readings that far off the scale, but they're all residual. There must have been substantial ghost activity there recently."

"There was," Dipper said. "That was sort of the ghosts' waiting room for the Beyond."

"Dipper says the whole crazy place is alive," Stan said.

Ford settled back in his seat. "I wouldn't put exactly it that way. Yes, the house has some kind of baleful awareness, short of full sentience I think, and it's definitely malevolent. I saw no evidence that it could physically alter its characteristics, but I'm convinced it has the ability to create illusions—hallways that really aren't sealed off seem to have no exit, for example, and in any given room you're apt to hear horrible screams and moans coming from the room next door, until you actually enter it, and then they seem to be in the room you've just emerged from."

"In other words," Stan said, "it's a fixer-upper."

"Indeed. However, I did what I thought prudent. My hope is that now the lich is gone, the psychic energies will gradually ebb and vanish. I think I treated every reachable room to dampen the effects so the house will not be capable of actually injuring anyone."

"Yada, yada, yada. Listen, if I'd worried about that kinda thing at the Shack, I couldn't have afforded the liability insurance I'd've had to buy!"

"But enough about me," Ford said cheerfully. "My word, Dipper, but you've grown since last I saw you! How old are you now? Seventeen?"

"Fourteen, Poindexter, fourteen!" Stan growled. "I can't believe you can recite pi to like a gazillion digits an' you can't remember how old the twins are!"

They talked for a good while about Dipper and Mabel and how they were doing, and Ford seemed impressed with Mabel's artistic abilities and with Dipper's athletic achievements. When they got to the Dalles, Ford asked about pulling off and finding a store where he could buy a new phone battery.

"You don't replace them," Dipper said. "It's like Grunkle Stan said, just recharge the battery. Really, it'll be good as new."

"Ah, well, I was sure it would be like a flashlight. These miniature computer phones never cease to amaze me," Ford admitted.

Dipper then said, "Uh, I ought to tell you something else, great-uncle Ford. It's kind of embarrassing because I panicked and—OK, you know about banshees, right?"

"Irish," Ford said promptly. A fae spirit that attaches itself to one of many Irish families and warns of impending death. The word means—"

"I Goggled it, Grunkle Ford," Dipper said. "I think there may be a banshee somewhere in the woods behind the Shack." He told the story, including the late-night visit that Russ paid to warn Mabel.

"Well," Stan said, "we're off the hook, anyways. The Pines family ain't Irish."

"There's a new employee at the Shack," Dipper said. "A boy named T.K. O'Grady."

"Oh, yeah. That's as Irish as they come," Stan conceded.

"That's correct," Ford said. "However, Stanley, the Pines family is actually part Irish. Remember Grandmother Fiona?"

"I remember she useta scare the pee outa us when we were about five years old, tellin' us those spook stories."

"Yes, well, she was descended from the O'Conors, ancient kings of the Irish kingdom of Connacht. So there is that. However, Dipper, the banshee doesn't necessarily forecast the death of an Irish person, but perhaps of someone that person deeply loves."

_"Miss Corduroy," T.K. had said, and with an adoring look in his eyes!_

"Grunkle Stan," Dipper asked, "can you drive faster?"

Stan obligingly floored the accelerator, and Dipper closed his eyes. _Sometimes _, he thought, _Stan has really good ideas. Like blindfolds for a car ride.___ They had turned toward the west and toward the lowering sun when all at once Stan stamped on the brake. "What th'—?"

Dipper stared, not quite believing what he saw. Ahead of them on the two-lane road that led into Gravity Falls Valley crowded . . . animals. A bunch of rabbits, three foxes, a whole herd of deer, a dozen or more, possums, five or six raccoons, field mice, two half-grown bears, even an elk. And oddly, they looked peaceful. Peaceful, but determined.

The El Diablo fishtailed to a screeching halt, blue smoke from the tires drifting ahead of it. "What is this, a convention?" Stan asked, leaning on the horn.

The animals twitched a little, but did not move from the road. In fact, a flock of Canada geese sailed in and settled among the milling crowd. "This is most peculiar," Ford said, holding onto his spectacles.

"Oh, really? I thought it just was huntin' season an' these guys were givin' up," Stan growled, opening the driver's door.

"Don't get out!" Dipper warned.

"Hey," Stan said with a fierce grin, "I faced down screwy zombies, remember? I should be scared of a homeless zoo? Please!"

Ford and Dipper climbed out too, just in case they needed to help Stan or run for their lives.

Stan walked toward the beasts with his arms extended and his legs sort of crouching. "Hey, you! Animal jerks! I'm drivin' here, you knuckleheads! Scat! Clear out! Get goin' before I make roadkill stew outa you!"

The creatures let him come right up to him, stepped, hopped, or fluttered just barely out of his way, and did not hurt him or act perturbed. For two or three minutes Stan waded around in the sea of animals, fruitlessly trying to shoo at least one off the road. When that didn't work, he turned and yelled, "Hey, Dip! Take out your phone and make a picture of me here. It'd make a great exhibit at the Shack: 'The Man Who Mesmerizes Animals!' Wait, let me pose next to the bear here. Man, he stinks!"

Dipper made three photos. Then he asked, "What do we do?"

The animals closed ranks again as Stan made his way back to the car. "Ya got me. This is the only road into the Valley. For some reason, they don't wanna let us in."

"Could they be under a dark magic spell?" Dipper asked Ford.

"Unlikely," Ford said. "They're curiously passive. If they were minions of some evil force, I have the feeling they'd attack us."

Dipper walked forward, but Stan grabbed his shoulder. "Hey, hey, Dip, dangerous wild animals can be, uh, dangerous! And wild!"

"I want to see if they are," Dipper told him. "If I get in trouble, come and help."

But he didn't get into trouble. Just as they had done with Stan, the peaceful animals let Dipper walk among them, just beyond his reach, but not threatening him in any way. Ford came forward, too—and the deer moved to stand shoulder to shoulder in front of him in a solid mass, preventing him from joining Dipper in the midst of the herd.

Dipper made his way back. He couldn't pass the deer until Ford backed off and they broke ranks. Stepping away from them, Dipper said, "It's you, Grunkle Ford! I think they're trying to keep _you_ out of the valley!"

"But that makes no sense," Ford said, scratching the back of his head. "I've never harmed an animal. Well, I take that back, I punched out a cycloptopus once, but it was attacking me. And anyway, it's a jerk."

"Maybe that banshee thing has it out for you, an' for some reason they're tryin' to protect you," Stan said.

"No, a banshee isn't malevolent per se," Ford said, shaking his head.

"Use English words, Poindexter! An' don't call me a pus—"

"No, no! I mean the banshee isn't evil as such. It offers a warning of impending death, through illness or accident or attack. It's possible that if the warning is heeded, the death can be averted."

"Well, what're we gonna do?" Stan asked. "I could just plow the Stanleymobile through the mob, squashin' 'em if they don't get outa the way."

"No, you couldn't," Ford said.

Stan sighed. "You're right. I ain't got the heart. I'm too kind an' gentle for my own good, that's my curse. So—what, then?"

Dipper and Ford hid their reaction by coughing. Then for a few moments no one said anything. The animals watched with a kind of patient alertness, docile and placid but looking ready to form a wall against them if they tried to get through.

"I'll call Wendy," Dipper volunteered. "She or Soos can drive out and maybe they can get through from the other side. Or maybe the animals will let us get to their car and then we can go home."

"I am _not_ leavin' the Stanleymobile abandoned by the side of the road!" Stan said.

Ford took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "Look," he said with a sigh, "I don't think I can get through anyway. They seem set on blocking my path. If Dipper can get someone to come pick you up, and if you two can get through this—this living blockade, then I'll drive the car back to Hirschville. I can rent a room at the Overlook Motel there. I think there's an electronics store in their little mall, and I can buy a charging cord for my phone, and anyhow I'll at least have a room phone. See if you two can get back home, and we'll figure something out so I can come and join you. I don't know, maybe I can rent a helicopter. Or I could call the Professor. He and his agents owe me a few dozen favors."

"Don't call them in on it!" Stan said. "I hate those government guys!"

"Shh!" Dipper said. He had his phone out. "Wendy, hi! No, listen, Ford's OK, it was all kind of a misunderstanding . . . . Yeah, I'll tell him, but listen: Is Soos real busy? Can I speak to him for a second?" He held the phone away from his ear and said, "Wendy says she's relieved, Grunkle Ford. Hello? Soos?"

It took a few minutes to explain, but Soos cheerfully said, "Sure, dawg, I can, like bring the Jeep! I'll come to the rescue, just like back in Never Mind All That!"

"You are the Handyman of the Apocalypse, Soos," Dipper said, unable to hold back a smile.

"I am needed!" Soos said. "Soos is, like, up, up, and on the road, dude!"

"Thanks, man."

"It's what I do! Oh, here, Wendy, dawg, and you're in charge for now!"

"Sweet!" Wendy came back on the line: "What's all this about?"

"Tell you when I get there," Dipper said. "Hey, is that O'Grady kid still there?"

"No, his shift ended and he headed home."

"OK. Look, do me a big, big favor and don't ask any questions. Just stay there in the Shack—I mean stay inside—until we either get home or I call you."

"Dipper? What is this? What's wrong?"

"I'll tell you when I get there. Stay in the Shack. Keep Mabel inside, too. I—I—you know. I'll see you!"

Stan, off to one side with his hands on his hips and facing down the animals, said without looking around, "Hey, Dipper? Whyn't you tell that nice girl ya love her?"

Dipper felt his face getting hot. "Stop it."

"He's quoting from _The Godfather,"_ Ford observed.

Dipper put his phone back in his pocket and said, a little sullenly, "I don't care."

"Sorry, Dipper," Stan said in a softer voice, surprising him. "I remember how painful it could be back when I was a teen an' liked some girl. You're lucky, kid. Remember how lucky you are."

"I do," he said with a smile. He didn't add, _And I sure hope my luck holds._

* * *

**Chapter 6**

A farmer in a pickup truck loaded with baskets of rhubarb and asparagus drove to within twenty feet of the animals and got out to ask what was going on. "Don't know," Stan said. "They just stand here."

"Spooky," the farmer said. "They's things in that valley ain't natural. I always said it." He climbed back in his truck. "I'll come back later on," he said, and then he jockeyed the truck and headed back the way he had come.

A few minutes after that they heard the clatter of Soos's Jeep. He pulled off on the shoulder and got out on the far side of the animal blockade. "Whoa, dudes! This is like uncanny! What do they want?"

"We don't know!" Dipper yelled. "Stan and I are going to try to come to you."

"Dawg, there's like bears in there!"

"Yeah, we won't hurt 'em," Stan said. He turned and handed his car keys to Stanford. "Get behind the wheel, Poindexter. I wanna see you turn around before we start. Anything happens, don't worry about us but dig out for Hirschville and don't slow down 'til you get there."

Ford didn't reply, but he did get behind the wheel, start the car, and back-and-forth until he'd made a 180 turn. He sat there with the engine rumbling.

Stan said, "Ya ready, Dipper?"

"Guess so."

"Let's do it."

They went single file, Stan leading the way. Once more the animals peacefully stepped aside, closing again as they passed. Stan kept muttering: "Thanks, deer. 'Scuse me, Mr. Bear. Nice-lookin' pup ya got there, Mrs. Fox."

Dipper followed silently, thinking _If any of them answer, I'm gonna panic! But then again, No, I won't. We're actually stepping into the valley. This is Gravity Falls now!_

Once they were behind the animals, Stan turned and waved, and Stanford put the El Diablo in gear. The long-nosed ruby-red auto with the white convertible top vanished around a curve.

For a few moments the animals stood, ears twitching. Then the geese filtered out from the crowd, ran a few steps down the highway, and took to the air. As if that were a signal, the bears lumbered off one way, the foxes melted into the underbrush on the other side, and the other animals calmly separated, all going their separate ways.

"Dawgs," Soos said, "that was like awesome! Wouldn't it be funny if some dude came runnin' right now an' asked us if we'd seen his performing zoo animals?" He looked hopefully all around. "Naw, guess they were just regular weird animals. Get in, Pines dudes, and we'll go back to the Shack."

It took them about twenty minutes to get there. Everyone seemed to be just standing around. "What's shakin'?" Stan asked.

Wendy said, "Nothin' at all, man. For the last hour there's been like no business. No cars, no buses, nothing."

"Because the animals were blocking the road," Dipper said. "Nobody could get through into the valley."

"Yeah, but they're like gone now, Wendy," Soos said. "Like, boosh! And they mysteriously just disappeared by walkin' away."

"Where's Grunkle Ford?" Mabel asked. She was wearing a tangerine-colored sweater with either a rising or a setting sun, yellow with orange bars, knitted into it.

"The animals wouldn't let Ford through," Dipper said. "They didn't attack but just wouldn't get out of his way."

Wendy frowned. "That's, like, bizarre. I mean, even for the Falls!"

"Well-p," Stan said, "for the time bein', I say we just hole up here for a while. We should hear from Ford soon. Meantime, is there anything to eat? Dip an' me haven't had a bite since breakfast."

Abuelita obliged with some hamburgers—"Yeah, put some of them jalapeños on mine," Stan said.

With a big smile, Soos's grandmother loaded it with not only jalapeños but also a few habaneros. Dipper opted for just lettuce and tomato. They also had a couple of Pitt Colas.

Stan took a huge bite, his face turned fiery red, and tears streamed from his eyes. "Now, that's a burger!" he said. He took another man-sized chomp.

"You eat like a _macho hombre,_ " Abuelita said approvingly.

"Hey, Soos!" Stan called. "How'd you like it if I married your grandmother an' became your gramps? That cool?"

"Why, sure, Mr. Pines," Soos said.

"I would sooner swallow a porcupine backwards," Abuelita said with a sweet smile.

"Ah-hah-hah! Feisty! I like that." One of the habaneros fell out onto the counter, and he scooped it up and chomped it. "Burny goodness! Second thought, though, if I proposed to you, Sheila would kill me. But you're the champion cook of these parts, Mrs. Ramirez."

" _Gracias_ ," she said. "When you finish, I vacuum your face."

Dipper had just eaten the last bite of his burger when his phone rang. He didn't recognize the number. "Hello?"

"It's Stanford, Dipper," his great-uncle said. "Listen: I'm in the Overlook, room 217. My cell phone is charging now. But I've been thinking, and this shouldn't wait. Could you go outside and check something for me?"

"Sure."

Dipper headed out, and Wendy tagged along. "Just in case," she said. "If some weird crap is comin' down, I wanna have your back."

"Thanks." Into the phone, Dipper said, "I'm outside now, on the front porch."

"Can you check and see if the unicorn hair we glued down is still there? It's important that it be in an unbroken line."

"OK." Dipper traced it and then reported, "Grunkle Ford? It's in place all around the original Shack, but the guest room and snack bar add-ons don't have it."

"No, of course they wouldn't." Ford sounded disappointed. "If only we had a little more of the hair—"

"Wait a minute." Dipper said to Wendy, "Please go and get Mabel to come out."

"What are you saying, Dipper? I didn't get that."

"I think Mabel may still have some of the hair. Wendy's gone to bring her out."

And when Mabel came out, she confirmed what Dipper said: "Oh, yeah, I got a pretty good skein of it in with my sewing and knitting things."

Ford asked Dipper to have her to go get it and bring some glue. Then she, Wendy, and Dipper attached it, overlapping the original strands. There was more than enough to surround the new parts of the building.

"Good," Ford said. "Now, this is important: After Weirdmageddon, the moonstones that completed the wards had all shattered. Do you know what moonstones look like?"

Dipper said, "No, not really."

"No matter. Listen carefully: Go down into my lab and work area. In the storage room next to the portal room, you'll find an old-fashioned wood pharmacist's cabinet with a hundred and forty-four small drawers. Drawer number fifty-three should contain a dozen or so moonstones. I want you to get three and bury them about six inches deep in these exact places. Get a pen and paper."

Wendy cooperated, but Mabel went to herd Waddles and Widdles into the Shack. "They have to be protected, too!" she said. Dipper could hear her reasoning with Abuelita, who had a definite prejudice against sharing living space with a pig or two.

Wendy and Dipper used a tape measure to pinpoint the distances Ford had specified, and then a garden trowel to dig down exactly six inches. "Ford was right," Dipper said when he scooped out the first one and the trowel grated on small fragments of a pale stone marbled with blue. "This one's broken to bits." He dug out the pieces and then planted the replacement, a pretty, round stone that did sort of shine in the dark like a mottled full moon.

They finished burying all three, and Dipper called Ford back to report. "OK, the stones are in place. What will this do?"

"It's a powerful protection against all malevolent magic," Ford told him. "It was strong enough to withstand Bill Cipher himself. Frankly, I don't think it would keep a banshee away—as I explained, they're not harmful, but only seek to warn us. However, it may well ward off whatever the banshee is warning us about—if it's a magical or supernatural threat."

"It may be some ordinary danger, though," Dipper said.

"Yes, there is that. Still, it's wise to take all precautions."

"Dude!" Wendy said. "Here comes the Greenway bus! We're back in business."

Ford promised to be in touch if he could think of any possible threat and ways to guard against it. "If you hear the wailing again tonight," he said, "call me immediately, no matter what the time. Any piece of information may be vital."

Wendy and Dipper hurried inside just ahead of the flood of tourists, who seemed unaware of anything odd on the highway. Soos, in full Mr. Mystery attire, took out a tramload of gawkers along the Mystery Trail, while Stan donned a spare fez and hawked souvenirs. "I wish Gideon were here," he said as the tourists chattered and browsed. "We need a Wolf Boy with this crowd. Dip, I don't suppose you—"

"That would be a no," Dipper told him firmly.

"Huh. Ya know, that Pacifica would be a big hit. Fur leggin's, maybe an itty bitty fur bikini top—"

"Yeah, good luck with that," Dipper said. "And don't ask Mabel!"

A woman said, "Excuse me." She was holding up a gnarled twig. "The sign says this is _palo santo_. Is this the South American healing wood?"

"It sure is! Fresh from Peru! Smell that piny-minty-lemony medicinal aroma," Stan said enthusiastically.

"Then I can expect it to cure colds?"

"Oh, lady," Stan said, "I one hundred per cent guarantee that you can expect it to cure just about anything. One hundred per cent!"

Dipper joined Mabel behind the counter as Wendy and Stan worked the room. They made constant sales, including the twig—for which the lady forked over twenty dollars. "I can't believe that Stan just sold that poor lady a stick," he said.

"We have a talented Grunkle, Broseph," Mabel said, ringing up a fossil ammonite and tossing in a bumper sticker for free.

The bus left after forty minutes. During the lull, Mabel counted nearly eight hundred dollars in sales. "Man!" Stan said. "Soos is like an idiot savant! If I coulda made that much every day the Shack was open, I coulda got enough material to fix that portal in like three years instead of thirty!"

"Soos is a lot less scary than you are, Grunkle Stan," Mabel told him.

He stared at her. "You really think I'm scary, Pumpkin?"

"Terrifying," Mabel said.

Wendy nodded. "I'll go with that."

"Yeah," Dipper said. "Pretty much."

"Well!" Stan said, standing straighter. "I'll take that as a compliment!"

"That's our Grunkle," Mabel said with a chuckle.

Later, business wasn't quite as brisk—but that was normal for the afternoons—and when the Shack closed for business at six, Wendy phoned her dad. She walked outside during the conversation—Dipper thought that if Manly Dan were just a bit louder, she wouldn't have needed a phone—and he stood on the porch while she walked around the parking lot.

She finally came back, rolling her eyes. "He ain't happy," she said, "but I told him I gotta stay over tonight. Dad and my brothers can go to the diner or order pizza. Man, I get so tired of cookin' for that crew and then cleanin' up afterward. My brothers act like if their hands touched dishwater, they'd dissolve."

"How's Junior? Is he still at the lumber camp?"

"Oh, yeah, workin' for Steve. He comes home at least every other weekend, though, so I can do his nasty, stinky laundry." She sighed. "He's gonna be another Dad. Ornery an' cranky an' gets into fights over nothing. Wish he'd find some woman who'd stand up to him an' marry her. He could use some sense if there was only somebody to beat it into him."

After dinner that evening, they all sat on the porch. Dipper brought his guitar down and played a few familiar tunes—not rock, but folk stuff, "Down in the Valley" and "Greensleeves" and things like that.

"Real nice, Dipper," Mabel said.

"I'm not all that good," Dipper said. "I keep making dumb mistakes, especially when there's people listening."

Mabel said, "Dip's been writing songs, too!"

"None are finished yet," Dipper said. He took the guitar back inside and put it away.

They watched a little TV afterwards. Then Wendy took the guest room and Mabel came up to the attic for a sleepover. "I guess it's OK," Stan said. "Just don't tell your mom you guys shared a room."

"We did when we went down to Dipper's track meets," Mabel pointed out. "All four of us. Jeeze, people have dirty minds if they think—"

"It's OK, Mabel," Dipper said.

In the attic, it seemed like old times. "Remember all those splinters I got that first day?" Mabel asked.

"Yeah, you pasted them in your scrapbook!"

"I miss this attic. How's the Invisible Wizard?"

"Still in the closet."

"Yeah, you wanna be careful if he ever comes out," Mabel said.

"You goofball!"

"You dork!"

They laughed together. Then Mabel asked, "Dipper? Do you really think somebody's gonna—you know, die?"

"Not if we can help it, Sis," Dipper said.

Mabel spread a blanket on the floor next to her old bed. "Waddles," she said, "you sleep here and keep me safe!"

Waddles, now a full-grown hog whose weight made the floorboards creak, obligingly settled down. Mabel put his much smaller daughter, Widdles, into bed with her. "And I'll protect this cutie myself," she said.

Dipper turned off the lantern. "'Night, Mabel."

"Dipper?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you ever wish we'd stayed twelve and the summer never ended?"

"No."

"Sometimes I do."

"I know you do," he said into the darkness. "But you're growing up good, Mabel."

"Dipper?"

"Yeah?"

"So are you."

* * *

**Chapter 7**

At first Dipper lay wrapped in a kind of nightmare. He was trying to play his guitar, but the strings were loose and could not be tuned, and then his new pinkies both fell off, while Wendy laughed at him.

He put down the guitar and picked up the fallen fingers, but when he tried to stick them back in place, his other fingers and his thumbs loosened and fell off, too. He looked to Wendy for help, but she had collapsed in helpless laughter. He couldn't even grasp his guitar to pick it up and run away in shame—

_And there it was—the dismal, eerie, rising-and-falling scream!_

It snatched him right out of sleep, with his heart racing and his breath coming quick and tight. He heard Mabel cry out in wordless alarm.

Dipper fumbled for the battery-powered lantern and turned it on. Across the room from him, Mabel was already trying to slide out of bed, over the bulk of a still-sleeping Waddles.

On the bed itself, Widdles squealed in obvious fear, trying to push herself into a corner as far as she could go, and then Waddles woke just as Mabel slipped over his back, her floppy-disk sleep shirt riding up her spine and revealing her pink panties. Waddles gave one cry of terror and then scrambled up onto Mabel's bed to cower with Widdles. The bed sagged and groaned under the weight of a full-grown pig.

"Is that it again?" Mabel asked, her face pale in the lantern glow as she tugged the hem of her shirt down.

Dipper had picked up his phone. "Yeah. Let's go."

They threw on robes and pulled on their shoes, and, as soon as they opened the attic bedroom door, Mabel grabbed Dipper's arm. "Dipper, look! The window! Is that—is that _it?_ "

The window with the triangle-and-eye stained glass flickered from darkness into dim visibility as something white fluttered just outside it. In that billowing whiteness, Dipper had an impression of a face in shadow and eyes that burned orange, like an animal's reflecting light. "Yeah, think so. Come on!" He grabbed Mabel's hands and pulled her to the stairway.

Wendy, her axe in hand, met them at the bottom of the stairs, wearing her flannel shirt over her red running shorts, her bare legs and feet pale. "Dude, is that—"

"Yeah, that's the banshee!" Dipper grabbed a powerful flashlight from the shelf where Soos kept it. He heard sounds as other people stirred: Little Soos began to cry, and Dipper heard Abuelita and Melody trying to soothe him. Soos, barefoot in boxers and a T-shirt, came padding out, gripping a golf putter. "Dudes, there's like a coyote or some junk outside!"

"Not a coyote," Dipper said. "Hold on!" He had dialed Stanford's cell number.

"Dipper?" A voice sleep-fogged but crisp.

"Grunkle Ford, it's happening again," Dipper said. "Listen!" He held the phone up as the wail became louder. "Hear that?"

"My word, that's . . . that's chilling. Dipper, listen to me carefully—the banshee herself won't hurt you. Banshees warn, but don't harm. Her form is probably terrifying, but if you can stand it, try to approach and persuade her to tell you anything that might be helpful. I trust you, nephew. You can do this."

"Thanks." Dipper broke the connection as Stan came in from where he'd been sleeping on the sofa, scratching himself. Like Soos, he wore boxers (red and white striped), an undershirt—a tank top in his case—and slippers. Unlike Soos, everyone was used to seeing him like that. He also carried a baseball bat in his free hand. "We gonna go have it out with this crazy thing?" He stopped scratching and pounded the bat into his palm, grinning in anticipation.

"Let's go," Dipper said.

Stan paused a minute. "Soos, for cryin' out loud, go put some pants on! There are girls present! And Wendy, too!"

"Sorry, Mr. Pines, dude. Be with you in a second, guys."

"Thanks for includin' me, Stan," Wendy said.

Dipper didn't wait for Soos, but opened the door. Cool night air flowed in, the sound with it, suddenly louder, almost painful. The wailing didn't seem to come from up as high as the window, which was around the corner—really, it didn't seem to come from anywhere in particular. It was a universal howl and could have been issuing from the earth itself.

"Is Mabel safe?" Dipper, already on edge, jumped at the intrusion of Russ's voice. The boy had melted in from the darkness.

"I'm OK, Russ," Mabel said. "I'm right here, behind my brother."

"It has come close," the red-headed boy said, pointing to the left.

"Let's go and face it," Dipper said. "Wendy, Grunkle Stan, Soos, this is Russ—uh, I don't know your last name."

"Renard," the boy murmured. "I do not—I don't live far from here. The—I hear the howling when it comes, and I worry, so I—then I come to see if . . . ." He trailed off.

"Hold my hand," Mabel said. Dipper almost reached for it, but then realized she was not speaking to him.

"Here I am, dawgs!" Soos said behind them, stumbling out onto the porch, now wearing his cargo shorts and a pair of flip-flops.

They all walked slowly and softly as they rounded the corner and stepped a little farther away to get a clear view of the upper story. Dipper shone his flashlight up toward the window, but nothing hovered there.

The beam glared on the stained glass, momentarily giving the impression that a triangular, one-eyed entity floated above them, staring down with an enigmatic gaze. Dipper shuddered a little as the circle of light hesitated on the red iris of the stained-glass eye, but he moved the flashlight and the beam passed on. Then he swept it around the yard. Nothing again.

"Where is it, Russ?" Mabel whispered.

Speaking in a slow, reluctant voice, Russ told her, "It is just over there at the edge of the forest. Away from the house. It is a frightful thing."

Wendy clutched Dipper's shoulder and said, "I got it, dudes! Low, under the trees, like it's on the ground, see?"

"Yeah, I see it now. it's a woman in white," Grunkle Stan said. Dipper heard him thunk the bat into his palm two or three times. "Sittin' on a log and cryin' her heart out. Right there, under the pines."

Now Dipper's light found her, but the woman, creature, whatever it was, did not move or shrink from the glare. Wrapped in misery she seemed, bent forward, hands to her face, her voice a keening lament that came from a heart broken and without hope.

All the sorrows of the world seemed to ride in that wordless song of grief, every mother's pain at a soldier's son's loss in wartime, every bride's anguish at a bridegroom fallen and passed on the morn of the wedding, every daughter's despair at the death of a good and kind parent, all woven together as, rising and falling, agony poured into the night like bitter water.

"Aw, dudes, she sounds so miserable," Soos whispered. "The poor thing!"

"You guys wait. I'm going in," Dipper said.

Wendy grabbed his shoulder again as he stepped forward. Her voice came low and fierce: "Like—fun you are!"

"She's right, Dipper," Stan said. "Let me take my Louisville Slugger in an' ask her nicely what's buggin' her. I'll get it outa her."

"Thanks, Grunkle Stan, but it has to be me. And I’ve got to do it alone. I'm the ghost whisperer," Dipper said.

He handed Wendy the flashlight. "Keep this on her. Come only if it looks like I'm in real trouble. If I don't—you take care of Mabel, Wendy."

"Dipper, no!" Mabel said. "Russ, let me go!"

"It is better to let your brother do what he must," Russ whispered.

"You can go, Dip, but I'm comin' halfway," Wendy said, brandishing her axe. "And you nor nobody else can stop me!"

"I'll be OK, Sis." Dipper took a deep breath. "Thanks, Wendy. OK. Halfway."

Dipper tried hard to swallow his fear, but those steps were hard to take. "Wait here," he told Wendy roughly midway to the figure. "Keep the light on us. I'll try to signal if I need you."

"I'm here for you, man," Wendy said. "Just yell an' I'm on that thing like a buzz saw on a birch log!"

"I don't think an axe would do any good." Dipper hesitated a fraction of a second and then whispered, "Wendy, I love you."

Her voice, soft: "Back at you, Big Dipper. Be careful."

Just a few more steps and he neared the crying figure. "I'm here," he called in what he hoped was a calm voice. "Dipper Pines. I don't mean any harm. I'm here just to speak with you. I—I'm afraid, but I don't think you mean to hurt me. Tell me what's wrong. Please. I'll listen. I'll help if I can."

The figure looked up, and Wendy's flashlight showed him a face that was—not horrible. Not old, not young, not quite human, but not monstrous. The woman looked red-eyed with long weeping, her expression locked in an expression of woe like the mask of tragedy in theaters, but not evil, not close to ugly. Dipper came to within ten feet of the figure and stopped. "Hello, Banshee," he said.

And for the first time since it had awakened him that night, the woman's grief-laden voice fell silent. "Aye." Her voice was rough from the wailing, but soft and—no other word for it—caring. "That's what the living call me. I am a banshee."

"Why are you crying, lady?" Dipper asked.

"Oh, in a thousand thousand years, never mortal has yet asked me the why and the wherefore of it until now. I weep out of woe for this house, for the death that approaches," she said in a hoarse voice. "'Tis my burden and my curse and my glory to mourn forever for such deaths."

"Whose—whose death?" Dipper asked, fearing the answer he might get.

Now he could see that, although the night lay perfectly still, an unfelt breeze constantly fluttered and flitted the figure's filmy white garments, toying with her long tangles of red hair. "Whose, ye ask? That name hangs by threads of doubt." Her dark eyes did not actually glow, but in the light, they shone deep as black, still, and ancient pools, and they had known sorrow for far, far too long.

Dipper swallowed hard. "Grand-uncle Stanford? Is it him?"

"Ah, there be much hatred toward the man, for he battled bravely and carried the fight forward. But I cannot say for sure, for the future has not yet unfolded. It could be he, or yet another."

Dipper persevered: "Is it Stanley?"

"'Tis possible, sure. He, too, is caught and wrapped in the web. Yet again, though, I tell ye, I do not know."

"Not—not Mabel, my sister?"

The banshee's expression twitched, as though she caught his fear and his anxiety. "Alas! Her life stands too in the balance."

"Me," he said.

And then she wailed again. "You—you began it, poor child! You are in great danger, too."

"Then—anyone? It could be anyone? Wendy? Soos, little Soos, Melody, Abuelita?"

"Child, I cannot say, for I do not know! But if fate be not foiled, 'twill be one whose loss could bring crashing down the family's peace and joy forever! All those in and of this house that are linked by lines of love, any one of ye who loves and longs may be taken as tiend."

"What? Tiend?"

But the banshee did not seem interested in offering definitions. She continued: "The unholy thing that comes wishes most to rend your hearts and break ye. It can take only one—it means to take the one that hurts ye all the most!"

"It can be foiled, you said? How can we defeat it?"

"I know not if ye can! I do not know, I cannot know, but I fear it must have its death! It be not of this world, but burns and boils with unholy anger against ye! Listen: Once long ago, by human count, a warrior gave his own life in place of the claimed one! ‘Tis a terrible step, though, and that one death brought more woe than the fated one’s might have done. Whether ‘tis possible without sacrifice, I know not, nor whether this thing can be beaten in battle. Look elsewhere for means to fight it, for I have naught but warning to offer!"

"At least describe this thing—tell me what it is!"

Instead of answering, the banshee stood, extended its arms as though they were wings, screamed its terrible lament, and rose into the air, slowly, her clothing and hair whipped by winds Dipper could not hear or feel. Her dress billowed and swirled around her— _That was the white thing Mabel and I glimpsed at the window!_

"Three nights now ye have!" it called as it rose. "This is the first!"

The figure faded, and her cry ascended, dwindling, until it was a distant whine like a mosquito, and then the dark sky fell silent.

* * *

**Chapter 8**

**From the Journals of Dipper Pines:** _Wednesday, June 11, about 3:30 a.m.: Funny, but when we started back inside, Mabel suddenly asked, "Russ? Where are you?" We all stopped and realized that he just wasn't with us any longer._

He had gone, just slipped away, and nobody—I mean nobody—among them remembered seeing him go. Hippie or whatever, there's something strange about Russ Renard. I’ll have to ask around town and see who knows him and his family. If I can get a line on where he lives, I may trek out to find him and talk to him about what's going on.

As soon as we were all safely back indoors, I went upstairs, away from all the excited chattering, to call great-uncle Ford. Somehow, I didn't want to go into the attic bedroom alone, so I sat on the top step and made the call.

Ford listened and asked a few questions. Then he said, "I hope if the threat is somehow supernatural or magical the wards you set will protect you. They're very powerful and should stand against anything a magical or extra-dimensional being could throw. Now, understand, Dipper, it's vitally important for everyone to stay inside the Shack. I'll try to drive back as soon as it's daylight. If the animals stop me again, I'll call you. It worries me that something wants us separated."

"We could all come to you," I suggested.

"No, that's no good. First, we'd have no protection to draw on here. I don't think the people who own the Overlook would welcome our surrounding the place with unicorn hair and planting moonstones. This is just a common run-of-the-mill motel, and the owners probably don't even believe in haunts and supernatural threats. Also, if whatever's coming really is something monstrous and evil, I'd rather keep it confined to the valley. Gravity Falls has a way of containing weirdness."

He wished us luck, we hung up, and I went downstairs. Everyone except Melody and Little Soos sat at the dining-room table, with Stan drinking from a big steaming mug of warmed-over coffee—nothing seems to keep him from sleeping—and I told them what Ford had advised.

"Oh, man," Wendy groaned, leaning back in her chair. I hadn't noticed before how mussed her hair was from sleeping. It made her somehow really attractive, so I had to concentrate on what she was saying: "Dad's gonna hit the ceiling when I tell him I have to stay over! Well, he hits the ceiling all the time anyway, but I mean he's gonna be mad."

"I'll drive you over an' talk to him," Stan offered. "Him and me are poker buddies."

Then Abuelita spoke up: "No. Is better I go with you to tell him. He listens to a sweet old lady who says you are needed to help with the teething baby."

"Huh," Wendy said, blinking. "Dad really does have a soft spot for babies. But would you lie for me like that, Mrs. Ramirez?"

"Like a chip rug," she said in a cheerful voice.

You know, there's more to Abuelita than I'd thought, too. Nothing is what it seems.

OK, I've put off writing about this because it scares me some and I hate the thought. But here goes.

I have an idea that I'll try tomorrow morning. Like Ford, I want to wait for daylight. This is about the last thing I want to do, but when you're up against it, I guess you have to take risks you wouldn't ordinarily. And since the banshee included Wendy in her—threat? Warning? Whatever it was. Since that's true, I’ve got to do this.

Because if I didn't and something happened to Wendy, I think I would die myself.

* * *

A little after seven that morning Ford called Dipper again, interrupting Dipper's morning run. He paused to take the call.

The blockade of animals ("Different individuals this time, I think. At least I didn't recognize any of the rabbits") had showed up again and Ford could not get through, either in or out of the Stanleymobile. A line of cars had been stopped on the Gravity Falls side, too, people on their way to where they worked outside the valley.

One of them was a burly guy in a pickup with a shotgun on a rack, but when he turned around and reached for the firearm, two big bears peeled off from the blockade and stood leaning on either door of his truck, just staring at him. Staring and licking their chops.

One bear even managed to open the passenger-side door a crack. The bears started . . . humming to themselves and licking their lips. The driver appeared to think things over and put the weapon back. The bear on the passenger side made a disappointed "aw" sound and shoved the door to again.

As for Ford, he turned around and drove slowly back toward Hirschville. As he reported to Dipper, "Pretty soon the pickup and all the other cars caught up to me and I let them all pass. Then I made a U-turn and drove back. When I first saw the spot ahead of me, the road _looked_ clear, but by the time I arrived, the animals were gathering again. I'm back at the motel now."

Wendy and Dipper had slowed to a walk as Dipper took Ford's call. They resumed their run, and Dipper told her what he had said. "Bummer," she commented. "OK, so this morning when we get back, Stan's drivin' Abuelita and me to my house to talk to Dad, and I'll pick up some clothes and junk. I guess I need enough for two more nights, huh? Then this'll be over, one way or the other."

They were running their back-country route, and they had already circled Moon Trap Pond and were heading back home. "Hey, Wendy?" Dipper said. "I'm gonna stay behind when we get to the bonfire clearing, OK?"

"What're you up to?" she asked, suspicion sharp in her voice.

"Nothing! It's just that I gotta do something."

Wendy chuckled. "Man, there's bushes all along the way—"

"Not _that._ I—I have to go to Bill Cipher's clearing."

"Then I'm definitely comin' with you."

"No, that's not good. I need to talk to him."

Wendy veered to nudge him gently, making him stumble a little. "So talk to him, dork! But like I said last night, dude—I got your back. An' I'm not returnin' it until this is all over!"

Dipper gave in, though he wasn't sure communing with Bill would work with Wendy along. But they turned at the bonfire clearing and then made their way down the little-used trail winding through the scaly-barked Ponderosa pines and the white-trunked aspens to the weedy, treeless spot where, three years ago almost, Bill's stone effigy had landed after he'd been erased from Stan's mind during Weirdmageddon. Now the gray statue, right arm extended, stood atilt and partly buried in the sod. Moss and pale lichens were creeping over it again.

"Stay here," Dipper told Wendy at the very edge of the clearing. "I'll probably look like I'm asleep, but it's cool. OK, just for safety, after I come back, look at the pupils of my eyes. If they're normal, everything's fine. If they're strange in any way—and you'll see it if they are—run. Don't talk to me, don't listen to anything I say, but run as fast as you can. If I follow you, don't have anything to do with me. Get back to the Shack and stay there."

Wendy gave him a sharp look, her eyes green in the morning light. "'Cause you won't be you."

"Yeah," Dipper admitted. "I don't know, Bill and me kinda have a truce, but you can't trust him. Not ever."

"Gotcha." Wendy impulsively hugged him. She breathed hard, then held her breath for a moment. "OK, OK. I'm cool. Do what you have to, Dipper."

Dipper walked to the fallen log—for the first time he realized it had plummeted to earth from the airborne, dissolving Fearamid, and it wasn't a log at all, but a huge joist or beam from some building the Fearamid had absorbed. It had straight-cut edges and lay half-buried in the grass. He sat on it, took seven deep breaths, and tried to relax and let his consciousness slip into the Mindscape. It was a lot harder with Wendy nearby.

But after a few moments the world around him stopped producing sounds—he suddenly missed bird song and the constant drumbeats of the woodpeckers—and turned shades of gray and black, and Dipper knew he had entered the world of dreams and nightmares. "Bill?"

The small voice sounded joyous: "Pine Tree!"

Dipper blinked his eyes—or his thought projection did the equivalent—and he focused on a small floating yellow triangle. "You—you're looking better." _He's a lot bigger, nearly the size of an actual nacho chip!_ With a mental effort, Dipper shrank himself—or his dream-projection of his self—down to Bill's size. Now he could see his old adversary in detail. _His bow tie is still in my colors. He still has some of my molecules in his makeup._

"Yeah, kid, I can't get rid of them, they're part of me forever, big whoop," Bill said. His cane was back, too, and he leaned on it in mid-air, polished his non-existent fingernails on his side, and stared at them casually. "Oh, now you're thinking, 'Wait a minute, I didn't say that, I just thought it!' Gettin' some of my powers back, Pine Tree. Hey, hey, just lookie over there! It's Red! She's lookin' gooooood! So, how's that action comin' along, Dipper?"

Dipper felt a surge of the old anger rising in him, but he kept his voice even: "That's private, Bill."

"Ooooh! Any kids on the way?" Bill clutched his cane with both hands, held it against his—well, not cheek, but the side of his apex—and his eye got big and mushy. "Ah, young love! To think that any offspring of yours might have a little teensy tinesy bit of me in him! Oh, oh, oh, if it's a boy, please name him after me, pretty please with a toadstool on top!"

"Nothing like that is happening!" Dipper got a grip on himself and then added, "Bill, concentrate. I need your advice. I've had a warning from a banshee."

Now Bill's eye widened in evident surprise. "Whoa! Pine Tree, that ain't good. You know what a banshee is, right?"

"Of course I do. What I want to know is if you can tell me what threat I'm facing."

"Well, if a banshee announced it, it's likely to be both unavoidable and deadly. And to involve the mystical. And—and—I got nothin', Pine Tree."

"Come on, Bill. I know you better than that."

Bill drooped. "Straight up, I'll tell you, kid: My abilities just ain't what they used to be. Not yet. Hey, hey, now, I can feel you starting to panic. I _will_ keep my word! When I'm strong enough, I will vacate this dimension without harming it in any way, and I won't be back. But that's gonna take a long, long time by human count. Until then, I hang around my avatar here and collect molecules as they erode out and I slowly grow. But I can't foresee the future, not really, and I can only get glimpses of Gravity Falls from the Mindscape here."

"Try to help me! I'm up against it, Bill!"

Instantly, Bill sprouted a beard worthy of a Harry Potter wizard, stooped over as far as a triangle could, and pretending to lean on his cane, said, "Why, by cracky, I recollect a time when I could git inta the dreams of pert' near everybody in th' whole dang world. I could look out'n all them there pictures of me in your world an' see ever'thing. Wish I wuz young an' acute agin!"

Groaning, Dipper said, "Bill, please. Is there _anything_ you can say that might help me?"

 _Poof!_ Bill was back to normal. In a sing-song voice, he said, "Sounds to me like somebody's looking for a deeee-al!" He held out his hand. "Shake on it?"

Dipper stared at him coldly. "You know better."

Impossibly, the triangle shrugged without shoulders. "Eh, worth a shot. OK, dang it, our little linky thingy makes me want to help you. It ain't like me, and I'm not used to it, but I'll try my worst. Just a sec. Let me concentrate." With another _poof,_ Bill's top hat became a sort of turban swathed around his peak, and a crystal ball appeared before him.

He let go of his cane, which floated in air beside him, and ran his stick-figure fingers over the shimmering globe as he stared into it. His voice became that of a jovial carnival huckster: "This is an actual, legitimate, imitation replica made in Hong Kong of the same genuine, magic, authentic crystal used by Cleopatra to see the approach of Julius Caesar and Marc Anthony, and so on and so on. Close your eyes, Dipper, to be better in tune with the infinite. We can't do these things without being in tune with the infinite . . .."

"Bill!"

Bill became his normal self. "Geeze and cracklings! Kid, you got no sense of the dramatic. OK, OK, here's what little I get: You've protected the Shack. That's good, and the wards will hold. But whatever is coming will wait it out—you guys can't stay holed up forever. You gotta find a way to fight it. Take it by surprise, 'cause it won't expect you to stand up to it. But there's still great danger, and odds are it's gonna take somebody down with it. Now, listen: whatever it is, it's partly of this world and partly from another dimension. Like me, kinda, when I took physical form. That's all I know. Sorry."

Dipper sighed. "Even that much helps. Thanks, Bill. I don't like you, but I truly appreciate your doing this."

Bill looked humbled. "Hey, OK, don't make me weep! It's just so—nobody's ever told me that—I—I'm all choked up." He bounced in air, pointing at Dipper. "Ah-ha-ha-ha! Look at your face! You believed I was gonna cry, just for an instant. Gotcha! Dipper—hey, can I ask a return favor?"

"What?" Dipper asked suspiciously.

This time Bill sounded sincere: "If you get through this, before you go home again at the end of the summer, stop and—say goodbye to me? You didn't last time. Kid, I kinda missed you, I guess. I get sort of lonely."

"If we all get through it, I promise."

"Thanks, kid. Oh, it'd be nice if you could bring a little gold with you. My molecules depend on gold, and even a smidge would help me grow." Bill perked up. "Hey, you remember in your first race, when you had to run that extra time for a longer distance than you expected, and you were runnin' out of steam and got that second wind?"

"Yeah?"

Bill snapped his fingers and winked. "The tiny little part of me that's in you sparked that rally off. Guess it's my competitive nature. Hey, hey, hey now, don't feel guilty about your finish! You didn't actually win, you know—and to be fair, that little part of me's really become a little part of you."

"And vice versa?"

For a moment Dipper didn't think Bill would answer, but then he did, quietly: "Sort of. Yeah. Just my luck, your molecules gave me something I never had before. A conscience, of all the useless things in the multiverse. You're waking up, I can tell. For old time's sake, I'll try to keep an eye on you. Say hi to Red for me, pal."

Dipper opened his eyes, and color and sound flooded back in. He stood up, breathed deeply, and walked over to Wendy. "OK, check my eyes," he said, standing still.

She stared into them. "You're my Big Dipper," she told him with a smile.

He hugged her tightly. "Thanks for having my back, Red." He felt Wendy stiffen at that, and then he pushed away and turned to glare at the effigy. " _Damn_ it, Bill!"

* * *

**Chapter 9**

When Abuelita spun her story of a constantly-crying Little Soos and spoke of how poor Melody was dizzy with sleep deprivation, and then added, "And Wendy, she is so good with the little one. Only she can calm the _pobrecito_ and get him to sleep a little. So let her stay a few days for the sake of the baby and the _mamacita, por favor._ "

Manly Dan pulled a wrinkled red bandana from his jeans pocket, blew his nose with a gushing _whonnnk,_ and then wiped his eyes with the soggy cloth. "Dingdang it!" he yelled. "I done that in the wrong order agin!" But he reached down and patted Abuelita's head. "You're a good-hearted woman, I can tell. Yeah, Wendy can help out for a few days. Anything breaks my heart, it's a poor little helpless baby cryin'. Uh, have you tried duct tape over its—"

Hurriedly, Stan put in, "Manly Dan, you're a big man!" While that hardly touched the truth at all—Manly Dan was to put it more accurately a _gigantic_ man physically and about a Gnome and a half in terms of fatherly warmth—it pleased the lumberjack.

Wendy hugged her father. "Thanks, man. You're the sweetest Dad in the world." She didn't add what she thought: _Especially if you're ranked with the species that devour their own young._ "I'll make it up to you if you guys can, like, cook for yourselves for two or three days."

"No, no, no!" Abuelita said. "I cook! I make things that you can put in refrigador and then make hot in oven. Here, Mr. Pines, you write down things to get and go to store for me. Then you take Wendy to home so she can calm little Jesús. You come back to get me at five this afternoon, and things will be all fixed."

"Aw," Dan rumbled, "I couldn't ask you—"

Stan pulled a deck of cards from his pocket. "OK, let's settle this like men," he said with a grin. "We cut for it. High side wins. You say Abuelita don't cook for you, I say she does. Here ya go, Dan, cut."

With gloved thumb and forefinger, Dan took about half the deck. "King of Spades," he said, showing the card.

"Oh, man! Tough to beat! I'm in real trouble now." Stan cut the rest of the deck, glanced at the bottom card, and said, "Oooh, hard luck, Dan. Ace of Spades."

"Geeze!" Dan said, pounding his fist on the arm of his chair, which fell off. "I _always_ lose at cuttin' cards! I dunno how many beers I bought for the guys doin' that."

"You'll win one day," Stan said, putting the deck back together. He had never once showed his ace to anyone.

Then Stan spent about an hour driving to the grocery, buying this, that, and the other, adding some plastic tableware and aluminum containers that could just be popped into a warm oven, and as an afterthought, he got a big pack of paper plates and one of paper cups.

He got back to the Corduroy house to find Dan and his boys chowing down on _huevos rancheros_ covered in melted cheese and Abuelita's improvised but always good salsa. "This is great!" Dan told Stanley, speaking through a messy beard and a half-full mouth. "Sorry, baby girl, but you could learn somethin' about cookin' from this lady!"

"I'll try to do that," Wendy promised with a smile and a suppressed shudder at her younger brothers' table manners.

Mrs. Ramirez unpacked the bags of groceries and said, "You get all I ask for, good man. This fine. You go to Shack now and come back for me at five. I be fine, and I make these gentlemens some nice foods."

"Let's go, man," Wendy said while her father still looked preoccupied with his fourth serving of eggs.

"Soos's grandma's quite a woman," Stan observed as they got into the El Diablo.

"Yeah, she's formidable," Wendy agreed.

"She's what?"

"Formidable," Wendy repeated. "You know, a force to be reckoned with."

Stan laughed as he turned the key in the ignition. "Dipper's gotcha readin' them literary books, huh?"

"Hey," Wendy said, "I'm tryin' to haul up my grades at school, OK? I got like a B average now, but it needs to be higher if I'm tryin' to go to college." After a few moments, she admitted, "I got a vocabulary-building app to help me."

"Well, good for you," Stan said. "I admire that, Wendy, no BS for a change. You an' me need to have a serious talk about Dipper someday. He's a real great kid, but he's a little bit broken, you know? He needs some lookin' after. You ready for that formidable job?"

"I'll take it on," she said, "with alacrity."

"Great!" Stan said. "Who's he?"

* * *

The golf cart buzzed along the trail that Stan had first cut into the forest and then Soos had kept reasonably clear. On the extended Mystery Tour, sometimes the tram came this way, and now and then—not often—the tourists would catch a flash of red and learn from Mr. Mystery that they had just sighted a Gnome, "Like, one of the rarest of the rare, y'know?" as he would explain, wriggling his fingers mysteriously.

 

Since he had to hold the microphone with his other hand, he had none left to steer with, and that little bit of theatrics often ended up with the tram colliding with a tree. No casualties to date, though.

 

In fact, Soos was mistaken. Far from being the rarest of the rare, Gnomes were about as common as crabgrass and roaches, with roughly the same personalities. However, it was true that Gnomes usually tended to avoid humans. In the time since Weirdmageddon, a very few had become familiar sights in town. In particular, Jeff, the Queen's interpreter and prime minister, hung out sometimes in the Skull Fracture, a biker bar, where he occasionally won small sums arm-wrestling much bigger guys. Gnomes are stronger than you'd think.

Now as the golf cart hummed along, Dipper thought, _This is like déjà vu._ Two years back, almost to the day, he had sped through the forest on the same golf cart (well, practically. Soos had rebuilt it so many times that only the steering wheel and axles remained original equipment, but still it was the Shack cart, and that meant it was the same one). At that earlier time Dipper had been riding to rescue Mabel. Now he and Mabel were cruising for information. The track lay in pleasant green shade and smelled piny and was cool, but so far, they had been disappointed.

"See any?" he asked her.

"Nary a Gnome," Mabel said. "Heh. 'Nary' is a funny word."

"Wonder where they all are? Try calling them."

Mabel bellowed, "Here, Gnomey, Gnomey, Gnomey! Hey, GNOMMMMMES!" Mabel's highest volume sent rabbits scattering from brush beside the track as snakes dived into holes in the ground and birds burst from cover and flew madly into the sky, but no one answered.

"OK," Dipper said. "I think that the place where we saw Jeff taking a, uh, squirrel bath is right about . . . there." He parked. They got out of the cart and walked into the small clearing to look around. "Jeff!" Dipper called. "It's Dipper, man! You there?"

When no answer came, he started to turn back toward the cart, but Mabel held his arm. "Hang on. I got a good feeling about this place."

Sure enough, they soon heard a rustling in the bushes, and an animal with a black face striped with white ambled toward them. It wore a tiny plastic crown on its head. When it came close, they realized it had the aroma of a carpet remnant left on the floor of an outhouse where guys had seriously bad aim. Walking beside it and holding a leash was Jeff, the royal interpreter and the Gnome who had the best command of English of all his kin.

"Dipper, my man! Whazzzup? Woogy mo-mo, bro!" he exclaimed, leading the author of this account to rescind the comment about English in the last paragraph.

"Jeff?" Mabel asked, blinking. "It's all good, bro. Uh—what's shakin', duuuuude?"

"Same-o, same-o," Jeff said. "No breaks, no shakes, y'know waddimean?"

"Jeff," Dipper said, "come on. Talk normal. We're not bikers."

"Too hip for the room?" Jeff asked. He sighed. "OK, fine. The Queen here says she's glad to see you both looking well, and Mabel, you never looked more beautiful." Jeff wiggled his eyebrows as though he'd been watching a lot of old Marx Brothers movies on TV, which Gnomes did not have.

"Tell her I said thank you, and she's regal," Mabel told him.

"Of course, she's legal!" Jeff said in a hot voice. "A Gnome queen can't be a Gnome by Gnome law, but she can be any other species—"

"I said _regal,_ " Mabel told him. "It means 'real queeny.'"

"Oh. OK. Regal. Good word. Wait just a minute, I gotta think of some word to forget before I can remember that one. Hmm. Is there much use for 'fubar'?"

"None at all," Dipper said firmly.

"OK, got this, hold on." Jeff closed his eyes, muttered to himself, and said, "OK, cleared the cache and regal's in my vocabulary now. Thanks!"

"And fubar isn't?" Mabel asked.

Jeff chuckled. "Funny-sounding term, Mabel! That's a cool word! Wait a minute, let me think of one to forget so I can remember it."

When he'd forgotten "malodorous" (Mabel said, "You got stinky, you don't need that one."), Jeff murmured the new words to himself several times.

"You mean every time you learn one new word, you have to forget another one?" Dipper asked.

"Well, yeah! I don't want my head to explode!"

"OK, OK, that's cool. Listen, Jeff, we just arrived back in Gravity Falls for the summer, but a banshee warned us—"

"Oh, my gosh! She was after _you?_ "

"She was warning us," Mabel said. "Not trying to hurt us."

"Hah! A banshee's one of the Fair Folk, and they and us don't get along so good! Let me put on my skepticles," Jeff said.

"Hey! I invented those!" Mabel said, laughing. "But no, Jeff, it's true. The banshee wasn't trying to hurt us, but telling us of danger so we could be ready for it."

"So is there something new in the forest?" Dipper asked.

Jeff waved his tiny arms. "There's always something new! A seed sprouts a leaf, a frog's eggs hatch into tadpoles, an old bird dies, a new one hatches out."

"Is there anything new and _weird_ in the forest?" Dipper asked, hoping if he narrowed down the question Jeff wouldn't wrangle over it.

"Well, you're here, that's one," Jeff said.

"Me weird?"

Jeff made a tutting sound with his tongue and shook his head. "Honestly, Dipper, if you and Wendy were Gnomes and you hadn't married her yet, everygnome would think you're several screws short of a toolbox."

"Preach it, brother!" Mabel said.

"Don't encourage him! And that's our business!" Dipper snapped.

"Oh?" Jeff asked. "How's your profit-and-loss projection?"

"Gahh! I should've known better. You guys are hopeless!" Dipper crossed his arms and turned his back on Jeff.

Mabel sat on a mound of dry leaves and said, "That's all right. I know you mean well. Come and stand beside me, Jeff. There, that's nice. Here, hold my hand. Now, you and I have a history, don't we?"

Jeff's face turned nearly as red as his hat. "Well, yeah. I almost married you."

"Yeah, I remember. But we parted good friends, didn't we?"

Squirming a little, Jeff admitted, "Yes, but you parted by walking into the house and I departed by being shot a mile and a half in a parabolic arc."

"Water under the bridge," Mabel said. "Anyway, after that we fought those weirdos side by side! We’re allies and friends! Now, I'll give you a kiss on the cheek—"

"Hot dog!" Jeff said, doing a little jig. Then he took off his hat, bowed slightly, and said, "Ready when you are, beautiful."

"Huh!" Dipper, who had turned around to watch, exclaimed. "You guys _can_ take off your hats! And your heads aren't pointy but normal!"

Jeff gave him a stink-eye look. "Yeah? So?"

Dipper shrugged. "Nothing. I need to tell Grunkle Ford, that's all."

"Now, boys, boys," Mabel said. "Jeff, first tell me if there are any new or strange creatures in the forest anywhere. Then you'll get your kiss on the cheek."

"OK, let me think. New bear cubs this season, but that's not what you're thinking about. Hmm. Oh, yeah, there's something real strange over by Needle Falls, or so the birds keep saying. It must be like a gopher, because they say it tunneled out of the ground."

"What is it?" Mabel asked.

"You got me, toots. The birds don't like it. They remember Never Mind All That, and they think it feels a little like that did."

"Needle Falls," Dipper said. "I don't think I've ever heard of that place."

Jeff looked as if he were trying to think of directions, but if he was, he gave up. "Oh, well, it's way off in the foothills around the bluffs to the west, a good way past the lake and all. Very nasty country there, all rocky hills and tough briars and things. During Never Mind All That, something either crashed to earth there or exploded there, but nobody could find a trace afterwards. You can't see the waterfall very well until you're close, 'cause it's just one very thin streak of falling water, but when the sun's just right you might glimpse it sparkling as far as the Shack. The way the birds chatter, whatever appeared there is scary."

And that was all Jeff knew, really, though he spoke on about it for about fifteen minutes. Mabel kissed him on the cheek, and then gave him a gift—the wad of chewing gum she'd been working on—and he accepted it with an appealing show of pleasure and gratitude.

There was no phone reception that far in the forest, so Dipper had to wait until he had driven almost all the way back to the Shack to call Ford.

"I know of nothing particularly virulent that dwells in that area," Ford said. "Or at least, thirty years ago there was nothing. It may be different now. Stay away from there. Do you understand me?"

"Sure," Dipper said.

"I'm not joking," Ford told him. "Listen, I'm working on a way to return to the Valley, and with any luck I may be able to make it this afternoon. If I can, we'll have a counsel of war about this approaching doom. When we all contribute to a plan, it can't help working."

"Yeah!" Mabel said. "'Cause we're flippin PINES! Oh no, wait, wait: 'Cause we're flippin' Pineses! That better?"

Dipper flattened his hand and made a _comme ci-comme ca_ rocking motion. "How about just "Because we're the flipping Pines family?"

"You got it!" Mabel punched the air. "Yessss! A successful call-back to something I never actually saw or heard!"

On the phone, forlornly, Ford said, "Sometimes I wish I knew what was going on."

* * *

**Chapter 10**

**From the Journals of Dipper Pines:** _Wednesday, June 11, 11:45 a.m.—Wendy got back to the Shack a little before Mabel and I returned, and we found we were needed. Three busloads of tourists crammed the place, and Wendy, very relieved, asked us to take over both registers, which Mabel seemed happy to do. Soos was getting ready to take a group out on the tram tour, and Grunkle Stan was working the floor. Mabel went into the snack bar and worked that register, while I started making sales in the gift shop._

I don't think I've ever seen the place that busy! I kept overhearing Mabel talking to T.K. O'Grady—passing orders, of course, but also chatting. I couldn't get much of what they were saying, but they kept up a lively conversation. Man, people were lining up for burgers and hot dogs! At one point, Mabel came running out to the storage room and grabbed a whole case of Pitt Colas, then went staggering back in with them. "Gotta get a fountain!" she said in passing.

_And it never seemed to slack off—as one group went out and boarded its bus, Soos dumped more off from the tram. I got dizzy from making change and running credit cards, and Stan was outdoing himself promoting stuff. At one point he even said, "Folks, ya have friends an' relations back home, I know! Bedazzle them with some genuine authentic guaranteed tourist junk! Great for birthday and Bar Mitzvah presents!"_

_He got a big laugh—but people bought! I know that he and Ford don't charge Soos any rent on the Shack—he pays them a token one dollar a year, which Stan claims makes the arrangement legal—so Stan is doing this just for the love of conning people. I should hate that, I guess, but it makes Stan who he is._

_Finally, after one o'clock, things cooled off. T.K. and Mabel kept the snack bar running overtime until finally the last bus pulled out and then they closed up shop and started cleaning. Wendy came over and hopped on the stool and put her feet up on the counter. "Whoosh, man! If this keeps up, I'm gonna ask Soos for a raise!"_

_"Yeah," Stan said, leaning on the counter, "an' he's probably gullible enough to believe you need one!"_

_"Hey," she said, "I got my car to fix, remember!”_

_“Soos can afford it,” I said. “I figure between $1100 and $1200 in sales so far, and the day’s not over.”_

_“How’s that car comin?” Stan asked Wendy._

_She stretched her arms over her head. “I'm gonna try to finish the work on Saturday. Can't wait to have wheels again. Right now, I'm just a ground walker!" She grinned at me. "Remember that?"_

_"Yeah," I said._

_"Well, ya know the place is gonna be closed on Friday. We always close for the fishing opener."_

_"Is that this Friday?" I asked._

_"Oh, yeah. Me an' Ford are gonna go out together. You an' Mabel are welcome to come, too."_

_"If we even make it to Friday," Wendy said ominously._

_"Yeah, there is that," Stan said, looking suddenly serious. "Hey, you hear that?"_

_I cocked my head and heard it then, a droning sound. "Just an airplane," I said._

_"Yeah, but they hardly ever fly over. The Valley does weird things to their instruments. I wonder—"_

_He went out, and Wendy and I followed. "There it is," he said, pointing up to where a yellow prop plane was circling at maybe 4,000 feet. "Uh-oh. I wonder if—yep, there goes Poindexter, the idiot!"_

_I saw a dot leave the plane. A few seconds later, a multicolored rectangular ram-air parachute blossomed. "Grunkle Ford jumped out of an airplane?" I asked._

_Wendy clenched both of her fists and bent her elbows. "Cool! I've always wanted to do that!"_

_"Just like my brother," Stan complained. "Jumpin' out of a perfectly good airplane! I can't watch."_

_"I think he's gonna land in the woods!" Wendy said._

_"He's gonna kill himself," Stan snarled._

_"Wait, wait," I told them. "He's steering—he's coming around in a circle—I think he's gonna make it to the yard!"_

_Well, I was nearly right. Ford landed and fought to collapse the 'chute, finally just unharnessing himself and letting it float away. Wendy ran and retrieved it. Stan, his hands on his hips, yelled, "Well, Braniac, ya proud of yourself?"_

_"I'm surprised," Ford said. "But satisfied that I can do something I've never done before. Well, that was exhilarating. In a way. Stanley, could I ask a favor?"_

_"What, Genius?"_

_"Well, I thought it would be obvious, but—get me down from the roof!"_

* * *

"We gotcha, man!" Wendy called up. "Be there in a minute!"

Dipper ran inside with her and they climbed the roof ladder, emerged though the trap, and clambered up to the sign, where Ford was clinging. "I'm afraid I might have dislodged the S," he said.

"Don't worry about it, dude," Wendy said. "It's always been down more than up, anyhow. OK, Dipper an' me will hold the sign steady so it won't tear loose. You just let yourself down until your feet touch the roof an' then we'll take you back over to the trap door."

"Trap door?" Ford yelled down, "Stanley, you put a trap door in my roof?"

"Easier to get up an' change the bulbs in the light fixtures that way! What do I do with this parachute?"

"Hang onto it! I get a deposit back when I return it!"

Ford needed a little steadying until he got his footing, but he crawled up to the roof peak, over, and then eased down to the trap door. "Funny I never noticed this ladder."

"It's behind a curtain in a corner of the gift shop," Dipper told him. "I'm surprised all the birds of the air didn't attack you!"

"I think my approach was too unexpected. We were close to a mile in the air. Who knows what may happen now, though? Will this hold my weight?"

"It holds Soos, dude," Wendy said. "Man, you parachuted in your trench coat and with a backpack? Rad, Dr. Pines!"

"Yes, I brought a few things that might help us. Well—here I go." He got his feet onto the top rung, then very cautiously lowered himself until he got stuck. Then he took off the backpack so he could climb down the ladder. Wendy lowered the backpack to him and then she and Dipper followed, with Stan bringing up the rear.

Mabel and T.K. had come out of the snack bar, and Dipper heard her saying, "Grunkle Ford! T.K. this is my other Grunkle! This is my new best buddy T.K. O'Grady! Grunkle Ford, how'd you get here?"

"Oh," Stan said, "he just dropped in." He nudged his brother. "Get it? Dropped in!"

"Very amusing," Ford said, shaking hands with T.K. "O'Grady, eh? Your family's Irish, I take it?"

"Uh, yes, sir," T.K. said, poking his glasses back into place on his nose. He stared at Ford, then at Stan. "Uh, excuse me, but are you twins, too?"

"Yeah, they are!" Mabel crowed. "Twins run in our family! Twins and in allergy season, noses!"

"Mr. O'Grady," Ford said, "if you have a few minutes, I would very much like to speak to you about some Irish subjects."

"Um—sure, sir," the teen said. “But only my great-grandparents were really Irish before they came to America. On both sides, I mean. But I’ve heard about Ireland from my grandparents.”

"He's so polite!" Mabel linked her arm through T.K.'s and kissed his cheek. "And he tastes like hamburgers!"

"Sounds perfect, Mabes!" Wendy said with a grin as T.K. turned bright red.

"Come with me," Ford said. He led T.K. to the vending machine, pressed his remote fob, and the door to his underground lab and study rooms opened.

"Wow!" T.K. said. "Like a secret passage!"

"Indeed. Please excuse the two of us for a few minutes. I must explore every avenue of this puzzle, and he may be able to help."

"Don't worry, T.K.," Stan said. "He ain't as crazy as he looks."

"He looks just like you!" T.K. said.

"Yeah, and they say I'm the nut, so you're safe!" Stan threw in a maniacal "Mwah-ha-hah!" for good measure, and Dipper thought that T.K. looked as if he were on the verge of making a run for it.

"Man," Wendy said. "OK, so now we got the full set. What do we do next?"

"Wait 'til Ford scares the bejeebers outa T.K. with his spook talk," Stan said. "Then Ford'll have some facacta idea of what we gotta do that'll turn out all wrong, as usual."

Mabel was fondling the rainbow parachute. "I can make a dress out of this! T.K.'s asked me to the dance after the Fishing Opener this weekend."

"You can't have it," Stan said. "Ford's gotta return it back to the Suicide Shack, or wherever he rented it from."

"Aw."

"Wait," Dipper said. "You've got a date to the dance? And there's a dance? And you think we'll live until then?"

"I see the glass as half full," Mabel said with dignity. "Shoot! Wendy, what do girls usually wear to the Fishing Opener Closing Dance?"

Wendy shrugged. You got me. Never been to one. Mostly older couples go, but the few kids I know who've been, I'd guess it's real casual. Jeans would do, even."

"Um," Dipper said, "just in case we do survive, would, um—I mean, if there's a dance and all, erm . . ."

"Sure, Dip," Wendy said. "I'll go with you. People are startin' to get used to us showin' up at these things together."

Mabel punched Dipper's arm. "Congrats, Brobro! You're nearly half brave now!"

"Thanks," he said.

* * *

When T.K. came back up with Ford, he looked a little green. "My folks tell stories about the banshee," he said, "but I never thought they were real."

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy," Ford said.

"Um. My name's Ticknor, sir. But I prefer T.K."

"That was a quotation from Hamlet," Ford said with a smile.

"Hey, Poindexter, the next buses will pour in in about twenty minutes. Let's grab some chow! That's a quotation from _Omelet!_ "

"Dipper and I'll make sandwiches," Wendy said. "Come on, man."

They managed roast beef and Swiss and grilled-cheese sandwiches for everyone, and Stan opened the snack machine for chips. After their hasty meal, T.K. asked hesitantly, "Can I stay? I mean, I usually go home now, but I want to find out about this thing that's threatening you."

"Sure," Soos said. "The more, like, the more of us to be merry. Or some junk."

"Do without me for a while?" Mabel asked.

They said they could, and she took T.K. out to meet Waddles and Widdles and to explain about what had been going on.

"If she doesn't scare him off," Wendy said, "Mabel may have found her first squeeze of the summer."

"Actually," Dipper said, "I think the other guy may be it. Russ Renard."

"What?" Ford asked suddenly. "Who?"

Surprised, Dipper said, "Uh, Russ Renard. He and his family live somewhere off in the hills. He showed up one night—huh. Come to think of it, he usually shows up at night. Anyway, he's about our age, and he seems worried about Mabel, but I can't get much out of him."

Soos, who was in front of a mirror, donning his fez, said, "Only comes at night, huh? You think he's like a vampire dude?" He chuckled. "That'd be so stupid cool! Also kinda terrifying."

"He doesn't have the fangs for a vampire," Wendy said. "And I think Mabel would've let us know. She has this whole thing about vampires."

Ford had taken out a pocket notebook and had scribbled something in it. "Describe this boy," he said.

"Uh, not quite as tall as Mabel and me," Dipper said. "Real thin, though, so he sort of looks taller than he is. Red curly hair, lighter than Wendy’s, sort of coppery-colored. Sharp chin and nose."

"Did you notice his ears?"

Dipper blinked. "He had some. Two, I think."

"Their shape?"

Dipper rubbed his neck. "Ear-shaped! I mean, they weren't pointy or anything. I don't think he's an elf."

"And you only see him at night," Ford mused.

"Well, no," Dipper said. "Just most of the time. The first time I saw him, he was in the bonfire clearing during the day, talking to Mabel."

"I may want to speak with Mabel about him," Ford said. "First, though, I need to check my Journals—I think Journal 1, if I remember correctly—"

"I've got my copy up in the attic," Dipper said. "I'll go get it for you."

"Thank you—"

Someone hammered on the door, making Dipper jump. Soos answered it and called, "Hey, Dip, dude! Somethin' for you!"

A delivery van had parked in the parking lot, and an elderly man in a tan uniform waited on the porch, holding a clipboard. Dipper's black, scuffed, dented footlocker, a relic of his dad's college years, stood on end beside him. "Mason Pines?" the old guy asked, thrusting the clipboard at Dipper. "Sign here."

"Mason?" Soos asked.

"I'll explain later," Dipper said, frowning as he signed the receipt DIPPER Pines.

"Is that, like, your nickname, dude?" Soos asked. "Mason? Like a stone mason, you know?"

"Yeah, something like that." Dipper reached for the footlocker as the old delivery man headed back to his van.

"Oh, I got that for you," Soos said, stooping and easily hefting it. "Up in the attic OK?"

"Yeah, thanks, Soos," Dipper said. "Here comes a bus. Better hurry."

"I'm on it, dawg!"

Dipper hurried back into the gift shop and told everyone that they were about to have company. "Guess Mabel's still off with T.K. somewhere," he said.

"You, me, an' Stan can manage," Wendy told him, "if you'll work the register."

"Got it. Oh, that was my trunk with all my camping stuff in it."

"Sweet!" Wendy said. "You an' me an' Mabes will go campin' and I'll teach you both how to be woodsy dudes!"

"If we live that long," Dipper said under his breath.

_Because I'm the only one who seems to care about it—but the banshee said three nights._

_We've only got two left!_

* * *

**Chapter 11**

A little before five o'clock, Stan drove over to the Corduroys' to pick up Abuelita and bring her home. A few minutes later, T.K. O'Grady rode his bike down the drive, heading for his own family—and Dipper fretted. The sun wouldn't go down for hours yet, not until nearly nine p.m., but what if something happened? Car trouble, delay—what if Stan and Soos's grandmother got caught outside the protective field after dark?

Mabel prematurely stashed Waddles and Widdles inside, up in the attic—"No sense in upsetting Abuelita," she reasoned. Though she seemed her usual self, Dipper sensed that something was wrong—Mabel looked tense, and that wasn't like her. When he finally asked her, she said, "Oh, nothing, just the usual teen angst, bro." She laughed, but it sounded phony. "You know, what with having two boys interested in me, and both have their points, and I don't really want to hurt either of them, and death is hanging over our heads and all, I need to think things out."

"Think it all out after all this is over!" Dipper urged. "Mabel, we've got to work together on this. We're the Mystery Twins, right?"

"Yeah," she said, sighing. "I guess. Mystery Twins." Her fist-bump, though, came off as only half-hearted.

Stan and Abuelita returned about twenty minutes to six. She was beaming. To Wendy, she said, "Your father and brothers, such sweet gentlemens. I made them meals to last for a whole week."

"Yeah," Wendy said with a grin, "maybe that'll hold them for two whole days. Thanks, Mrs. Ramirez."

" _De nada._ And please," she said, "you can call me Rosa."

"That's a pretty name," Wendy said, giving her a hug. "OK, you've been in the kitchen all day, so Dipper and I will make dinner. You go rest."

"Oh, thank you. That does sound so good. I will go sit in my decliner chair and put up my feet. They are tired."

Actually, Wendy had started preparations for dinner as soon as business trailed off, and now a big pot of beef stew bubbled and simmered on the stove, chunks of beef, carrots, and potatoes rising and falling in the brown gravy. She hauled Dipper into the kitchen and said, "OK, man, let's see how you shape up as a cook."

"Wait, what? I've never really cooked before," Dipper confessed. "I mean, you know, not for the family or anything. I don't know how!"

"Doesn't matter. This one anybody could do." Humming cheerfully, Wendy bustled around, taking ingredients from the pantry. "Get the stock pot—the big tall silver one with the two handles—yeah, that one—and put it on the front burner." She rummaged in a drawer and said, "Ah-hah! I knew Stan would have a church key!"

"A what?" Dipper asked.

She tossed him a silvery punch can-opener with one sharp and one curved end. "Useta be a beer can opener, in the Dark Ages before pull tabs were invented. You see that sharp end? Ok, you put the little metal tab underneath it on the lip of a can, then pull it up like a lever, and it punches a hole. For liquids only, of course. And you need a second hole on the opposite side to let air in as you pour. Open these four cans." She set four big tins of vegetable stock on the counter.

"OK, I'll try. Uh, what's the round side for?"

"Poppin' the tops off beer bottles. No, you wanna hook that little square tab under the rim of the can to give you leverage. There ya go."

Dipper expected it to be hard, so he tried to hold the opener with both hands. "Like this?"

Wendy chuckled. "No, dude, hold onto the can with one hand as you punch it, or it'll spill. Yeah, _now_ you got it. Open 'em all and pour 'em into the pot."

Dipper found that if he levered the opener, just as Wendy said, it took very little effort to make a neat triangular hole. The first one was tentative and kind of messy, but after that he nailed it. Meanwhile Wendy was lining up a bunch of ripe tomatoes and taking soft cheese and herbs from the fridge.

"All done," Dipper said.

"'Kay, now fill one of those cans with water and pour it in, too. Repeat that six times in all. You can go ahead and turn the burner on sorta high."

He did and then started filling the can. It was tricky getting the water to flow at the right rate to fill the can without splashing around the hole, but he did it and poured the six cans of water into the warming stock. "Now?"

Wendy didn't look up from slicing the tomatoes. "Now, dude, see that big box there on the counter that says 'Polenta?" That's what you're making."

Dipper picked up the box. "What is it?"

"Oh, man!" Wendy said with a laugh. "You never had it? Don't worry, it's easy to make and goes great with stew. Now, you want to stir that stock and water about every minute or so until it comes to a boil. In between doing that, open the middle drawer of the fridge and find that great big wedge of Parmesan cheese. You're gonna grate about half a cup. The grater's in the drawer to your right, and get a shallow bowl to grate it into. Don't worry 'bout measurin' it, just do it until it looks about this deep in the bowl." She held up her hand, her thumb and forefinger about an inch apart. Dipper noticed that she extended her pinky as she did so, and he found that somehow endearing.

Dipper followed Wendy's directions. When the stock was boiling, he stirred in two cups of the grainy yellow polenta, then industriously kept stirring it until the mixture thickened. He added a little salt, milk, butter, and the grated cheese, and Wendy took a look, got a spoon, and smacked her lips as she tasted the mixture. "Just right," she said. "OK, salad's ready, stew's ready, go set the table. Let's you and me eat at one of the round tables in the snack bar—not hardly enough room for everybody in the dining room."

They called everyone in, and Wendy said, "OK, everybody, you can get your bowls and serve yourselves the stew. Get whatever you want to drink, too. This big bowl is polenta, an' here's a tomato, onion, basil, and mozzarella salad for a side. Mabes! Dip an' I did the cooking, so you're gonna wash up, got it?"

"Absopositively not!" Mabel said, ladling steaming stew into her bowl.

Wendy chuckled. "You learn well, Padawan. Kidding aside, though, you _are_ gonna wash up."

"OK," Mabel said. "This smells good! What's the yellow stuff again?"

"Polenta," Dipper said. "Don't you know what that is?"

Stanford and Stanley got themselves a couple of beers and then dug in with a vengeance, and Soos shoveled everything in as though he were stoking a steam locomotive that was late with the morning mail. Melody ate with more restraint, and so did Abuelita, although she smiled all over her face as she tasted the stew and said, " _Es muy bueno, Chica!"_

"Hey, _gracias,_ Rosa!" Wendy said.

Soos paused with his spoon halfway to his mouth, dripping stew onto the table. "Huh? Rosa? Is that, like your name, Abuelita? You never told me!"

"I tell those who need to know," she said. "To you I am always Abuelita, my little _masa de grasa._ "

Wendy and Dipper took their food to the snack bar and set their bowls and plates on either side of one of the miniature tables. They didn't turn on the overhead fluorescent lights, but sat in the warm yellow glow leaking in from the gift shop. They could hear the clink of silverware and the hum of conversation from the dining room, but they had a kind of illusion of privacy. Wendy set a can of Pitt Cola in front of Dipper and then took the chair across from him. "Eat up, man."

"I'm tired," Dipper confessed, taking a sip of the cola and—just his luck—getting the pit in his mouth first thing. He spat it into his hand and put it down on a paper napkin.

"Go on and eat, you'll feel better," Wendy said. "Come on, Dipper, you heard what Abuelita said! It's mooey bone-o or some deal."

He mustered a weak smile but only ate a little of the tomato, cheese, and herb salad—unless they were in sandwiches, tomatoes weren't his favorite—but the beef stew was scrumptious, rich and tasty, and to his surprise the corny, cheesy flavor of the polenta really did set it off. "Hey, this is really good stuff," he told Wendy. "Thanks!"

She shrugged. "Eh, stews get to be your specialty when you spend days an' days out in the woods. Pretty easy to make, filling, and they taste good. You did good with the polenta, too, man. Very smooth, no lumps!"

With her lumberjack appetite, Wendy breezed through her meal before Dipper was half finished. She leaned her chin on her hand and smiled as she watched him eat. "You're real worried," she said. "Don't try to hide it, Dipper. I know."

Dipper squirmed a little, because in fact he had not intended to let on how concerned he was feeling—and how upset that nobody else seemed to be taking the threat as seriously as he did. "Well, yeah! I mean, something out there wants to kill us! And I have no idea what it is!"

"But you're gonna find out," she said. She sipped the last of her cola. "What're you planning, man? I know you're keepin' somethin' a deep, dark secret."

He blinked at her. "How—who—"

"Our crazy ESP actin' up, I guess," she said with a smile.

He felt a touch on his leg. She had kicked off her boots and reached out with her foot to rub his shin gently, up and down, her toes curling to caress his ankle. Dipper started to tingle and blush. "Aw," he said, "OK, I'll tell you. I'm gonna see if Ford will go with me tomorrow out to Needle Falls. You know where that is?"

"Sure," Wendy said. "It's over at the butt end of nowhere. Stunted, weird-lookin' trees, twisted, nasty weeds that look like they came from another planet or some deal, lotsa rock falls—all just badlands, really. Best not to drink the water from the falls, by the way—crazy metallic-tasting with minerals. And you can't get very close in a vehicle, so it's like a couple hours hard walkin' both in and then out again. But, Dip—Ford ain't gonna make it if the animals gang up on him. No way."

"Well—that's where whatever it is, is coming from, at least according to Jeff. I want to go there in daylight, check it out, and get back here by nightfall."

"Gonna be real hard, dude," Wendy said. "Long way and tough hikin'."

Dipper ran his hand through his hair. "I thought once Ford actually got into the Valley, the animals might, you know, give up and leave him alone."

"Betcha they don't, though. I got a feeling they're trying to protect him, not hurt him, so they're gonna head him off. 'Specially if he's goin' _toward_ the danger. So—I guess it's up to you an' me."

"No!" Dipper said. "I—I'll go alone if I have to. I don't want to risk you getting hurt, or—or worse!"

"You think you're gonna stop me?" she asked, grinning. "Come on, man. You think I want _you_ marchin' off into the lair of some stupid monster or ghost or somethin' without me along to help out? No way." In a soft voice, she added, "I got an investment in you, Dipper. Put a great big chunk of my heart into you already. Losin' you would kinda break me."

"That's the nicest thing anybody ever said to me," Dipper admitted. He slumped and shivered a little as her toes kept rubbing his leg. "Oh, Wendy! I—you know, sometimes I get so tired being the guy who chases down all the crazy ghosts and monsters! You'd think by now I'd be brave, but—I'm just scared. I'm really scared."

"But scared as you are, you're still gonna go hikin' out to Needle Falls anyhow. Where somethin' that might want to kill you might be, like, lurking."

Dipper swallowed hard. "Well, yeah—because I don't know what else to do, and we _have_ to find out what we're facing."

Wendy leaned forward, took his hand and squeezed. "See, Dip, _that's_ bein' brave. Not gettin' numb to danger. I mean, ignorin' a threat, that's just dumb, man! But bein' scared and still doin' what has to be done, now _that's_ courage, Big Dipper."

He smiled miserably. "Yeah, but it happens like every week in Gravity Falls! I just wish when it does, I wouldn't always get the same feeling!"

"You can deal with it," she said. "I know you can." She raised his hand and kissed it.

"Dip-PER!" Mabel bawled from the kitchen. "Come on! If I'm gonna wash up, at least you can dry!"

"Way to ruin a moment, Mabel," Dipper muttered. But he called, "Be there in a second!"

"We won't do our run tomorrow," Wendy said, pulling on her boots and then getting up and reaching for the dirty dishes. "We'll let the hike do instead."

"Wendy—thank you," Dipper told her. "You—you're the—I mean—"

Smiling warmly, she shrugged. "Yeah, I know. Now go help your sister."

* * *

**Chapter 12**

Daylight weakened it.

It did not dare stir abroad in the glare of the sun, for its rays acted against the creature's nature.

Underground was better, stifling, stony, bitter with tainted water and unfamiliar minerals from this reality, uncomfortable in almost every way, but dark, dark, dark and safe.

The sun still shone on the bluffs and when the light fell strong it was no good and the consciousness that tunneled upward toward the air knew it was no good and paused because it had no way of telling when it might shove aside two stones and burst into the hateful light.

Awareness had been oh, so very slow in returning, coming in a mere trickle over weeks and months and perhaps years, but the thing buried beneath the fallen rocks had no concept of time anyway, only of duration, and duration served only as a stone upon which to whet and sharpen its hatred.

 _They would pay, yes, they would pay,_ though not all of them by losing life, because certain ancient rules stood in place and longer ago than the Earth itself had existed the burrowing thing had pledged eternal obedience to the great leader and that oath could not be broken, ever, not so long as universes endured.

One of the enemy, however, could be taken and killed, one whose loss would cause pain and grief to the others and that would suffice, though it would not blunt the edge of loathing the mind beneath the stones harbored for the ones who had defeated it in unfair battle, who had humiliated it before the eye of the great leader, had buried it beneath rock.

The master, the leader, where had he gone? When the unnameable thing beneath the ground, burrowing up, waiting to feel the dark before bursting out, had a moment to think, when it did not concentrate on the difficult, continuing task of shifting stone, sometimes grinding it to powder over the course of weeks, the question plagued it, for always, always before now it could always sense, could feel the master's implacable will, harder than the stone.

Now that will had evaporated, had vanished from the Mindscape, could not be found, could not encourage it to continue in its slow, slow upward course, inevitable as the circling of the stars, as purposeful as an arrow aimed at the beating heart of a despised enemy, but oh so slow, and yet it yearned to come into the dark and find the master.

Not to ask permission, for the hated creatures that had doled out so much pain and so much humiliation had forfeited the protection of even the mighty leader and one of them at least had to die, had to die, had to _die_ in the way of the weak beings on this inferior world in this strange universe.

Upward and upward and pause for the light, upward and upward and pause for the light, all the time breathing inwardly on the orange-hot speck of anger and hatred, urging it to flame, all the time knowing that the time for taking sweet revenge already approached.

Which one, which _one,_ was the question; not the two twins the master had claimed as his own prey, the two who had each opened a way in, and so he could not have either, but he _could_ hurt them, for those two had ties of that strange force called _love._

Two younger ones, male and female, delicious, two small deaths for one large one might be permitted, or perhaps the inventor and builder crazed by a flash of vision, old though he was.

Or if not any of them . . . someone dear to one or more of them, someone _loved_ would do.

When the light of the sun faded and night reclaimed the world.

Soon, now, at last sooner and not later.

Then someone would pay.

Would suffer.

_Would die._

* * *

"Geeze Louise!" Stan exclaimed, looking out the window. "It's Sheila!"

"Oh, I've been wanting to see her again!" Mabel said, bouncing on the sofa, where she, Dipper, and Wendy had been watching _Zombie Mamba,_ a movie about an undead snake, convincingly acted by a rubber snake pulled by a visible string.

Stan stood in the doorway and called, "Sheila, baby! What's shakin'?"

On the couch Dipper heard the smack of a kiss and stuck a little finger in his ear to make sure it wasn't the product of his imagination or earwax buildup. He asked Wendy, "How . . . long has that been going on?"

"Since last year's baseball season, dude!" Wendy said with a laugh. "Stan an' Sheila are, like, an item! Everybody's expecting him to give her a ring most any time."

"I call bridesmaid!" Mabel announced, fist in the air.

Stan came back, with a blonde woman probably somewhere in her forties holding his arm. She was—well, not gorgeous, but very comfortable looking, plump rather than fat, with beautiful blue eyes—her best feature, everyone said—and wearing jeans, a white T-shirt, its swelling bosom printed with the colorful warning "Eyes this way!" and a red arrow pointing up toward her face, and over the T-shirt an open short-sleeved pale blue chambray shirt. Wendy waved and said, "Hiya, Sheil'! How's tricks?"

"Not so bad," Sheila said, laughing. "OK, this must be Dipper and Mabel. Stan's told me all about you guys. Wow, you're twins just like him an' Stanford! I'm Sheila Remley, but you probably don't remember seeing me."

"Yeah, I do!" Mabel said. "You work at that cloth remnant place where we came an' bought material for our baseball jerseys!"

"Ya know," Stan said, "Mabel made those jerseys."

Sheila blinked. "No kiddin'? You do great work, hon!"

"Thank you," Mabel said. She waved both arms in a rubbery motion. "What can I say? I'm just fabrically inclined! Womp-womp!"

"So what's up with the 'Temporarily Closed' signs, Stan?" Sheila asked. "I had to get out of my car, take the chain down at the end of the driveway, drive through, and then get out to hook it again! What's up with the Shack?"

"Uh, see, what it is, we gotta do some exterminatin' tomorrow, so we're just closin' for Thursday and also Friday this week, you know, fishin' opener and everything. Hah!" Stan clapped his hands together. "Well, it's great of you to come over, been a real blast, y'know, but the family's kinda in the middle of somethin'. Let's have a cup of coffee an' then I'll have to see you off."

And as if on cue, Ford walked into the room, cradling something that looked like a cross between a rifle and a gigantic industrial vise. "Stanley, I've charged up the quantum destabilizer. This new model is more properly a disruptor, but if it comes to a fight and I can't handle it you need to learn—oh, hello, Sheila."

"Hi yourself, Doc," the blonde said, grinning. "Say, is that based on a protonic generator? Fires a gluon beam, right? Broad-band or narrow?"

"Narrow," Ford said enthusiastically. "Beam diameter of 65 millimeters at the muzzle, multi-corrected quartz prism-and-lens compression so its focus is like a laser's—in fact, I call it a glaser beam—and the expansion is almost negligible. At one mile's distance in atmosphere, it's still only 70 millimeters."

"Much exit damage?" she asked.

"Oh, the beam takes out everything within about a 250-millimeter diameter from the strike point, more or less, determined of course by the density of the target. The gluons rapidly decay, so the effective range is about five hundred meters, though up to two kilometers away—twice the distance of my first destabilizer—anything struck will experience significant damage. At triple that, it's just a light show."

"And a partridge in a pear tree!" Stan snapped. "Look, Ford, Sheila ain't interested in your science fair project!"

"Oh, I am, too," Sheila said, laughing and linking her arm with Stan's again. "Come on, Stanley! I didn't almost get a doctorate at Cal Tech for nothing, sweetie!"

"Yes, I heard about that from Stan," Ford said, his expression sympathetic. "Too bad your compact particle accelerator broke free of the Earth's gravity before the doctoral committee could examine it."

"Yeah," she sighed. "I figure it's somewhere out past Pluto by now, and still accelerating. I knew I should have built in some particle brakes."

"Believe me," Ford said, "I know all too well the pain of creating an invention that fails to operate at the crucial moment."

"I never even been _near_ Cal Tech!" Stan objected. "For cryin' out loud, Ford, let it _go!_ "

Sheila studied the device that Ford held for a moment, and then, tilting her head, she asked, "So why do you need that kind of weapon, Ford? Inquiring minds want to know!"

"It's a long story," Stanford said with a sigh. "Dipper—perhaps you can fill the lady in."

Stanley threw up his hands. "Oy! Excuse me. I'm gettin' myself some coffee. Sheila?"

"Half a cup, black, please," she said.

"I know, I know. Anybody else?"

"Hot cocoa would be great, dude," Wendy told Stan.

"Yeah, that sounds good, thanks, Grunkle Stan," Dipper added.

"I'll come and help!" Mabel said, leaping up. "Mabel juice for me!"

"Mabel juice?" Sheila asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Believe me, you don't wanna know," Stan advised. " _That's_ what should be somewheres out past Pluto!"

Widdles, who must have heard Mabel's yell, came ambling in, and Mabel swept her up and held her close. "Oooh, come to Mommy!" She kissed the pig's pink snout and set her down again. "Sheila, this is my latest pig, Widdles!"

"I _love_ pigs!" Sheila cooed, coming over to lean down and skritch Widdles's floppy ears.

Mabel reached over and grabbed Stan's jacket lapel and pulled him down close to her. "Grunkle Stan," she said in a whisper loud enough for everyone to hear, "quick, _marry_ her!"

* * *

Grunkle Stan had been sleeping on the sofa, but at ten p.m. he and Sheila pulled it out and unfolded the hide-a-bed. "You sure you wanna do this?" Stan asked Sheila. "I'm told I snore."

"So do I, Stanley hon," she said sweetly. "Let's see who can sleep through the other one's chainsaw."

Melody was shorter than Sheila, but she lent Sheila a pair of her pink flannel pajamas that fitted the blonde pretty well. Stan was wearing his usual after-hours attire of boxers and T-shirt. "No funny business, OK?" Stan warned, stretching out. "This parlor don't have doors, ya know. Anybody, including a couple pigs, or even worse Soos, might come roamin' through at any time. And I warn ya, sometime between midnight an' four we're definitely gonna hear the banshee. Hope it don't scare ya."

"I'm a tough gal. My _husband_ never scared me," Sheila said firmly. "And even besides him, right after I moved to Gravity Falls I had to face down a dybbuk and then the next day fight off a buncha sad-sack losers in crazy red robes! I can take care of myself, thanks. You shoulda told me you were in trouble, hon. I would've been here sooner."

Stan lay on his back with his hands behind his head. "Yeah, well, I didn't want to involve you, ya know. Cause I guess I kinda care about you. 'Course people in town make fun of me, ugly wrinkly old geezer runnin' around with a beautiful young girl like you." He paused and then shyly asked, "So whaddaya think about Mabel's suggestion? I don't suppose you'd really consider marryin' an old fart like me?"

"Mm . . . let me think about that one," Sheila said playfully, and before turning off the lamp, she kissed his big orange nose.

* * *

"Aw, Mabel, dude," Wendy said up in the attic, "you totally gotta give Waddles a bath, man! He smells kinda, you know, _yuck!_ "

"Yeah," Mabel said, "I will. He usually gets one every other day, but what with the banshee and all, I guess I skipped a couple. It's OK, you don't have to worry. You get used to it pretty quick. And Waddles never gets in Dipper's bed, just in with me, and that's only when he's really scared. He'll stay right here beside me, down on the floor. Sorry about the stink."

"Don't sweat it," Wendy said. "I can stand Dad's after he comes home from a long night in the Skull Fracture, so this is, like, minor. Let's get what sleep we can." She turned out the lantern. "Dip gonna be OK down in the guest room?"

"Yeah, he'll be fine. He always stays there when I have a sleepover. Wendy? Do you think the banshee is right? Is one of us, you know, gonna really die this time?"

"Dunno, Mabes," Wendy said somberly. "But I swear this: it won't be you or Dip. Not if I can help it."

"Better not be you, either," Mabel said in a small voice. "'Cause if he lost you—I think Dipper wouldn't have the will to live, either."

* * *

Dipper came up the steps from Ford's basement compound, opened the concealed door, and turned to look down at his great-uncle standing under the conical-shaded hanging light down at the bottom. "Thanks, Grunkle Ford," he said. "But will any of these devices even work if the thing that's threatening us is a ghost, or a magic creature, or something like that?"

"We can only hope, Dipper. Now, remember, your pistol version of the destabilizer probably isn't strong enough for a kill shot—"

"I know," Dipper said, smiling. "I got it the first three times you told me. If I can target whatever it is, I shoot it in the leg or whatever to disable it, and that should buy us time. If it gets real close, I'll go for the head."

"Remember, it takes a full eighty-seven seconds to recharge, so odds are you’ll have only one shot. And it's true the head’s _usually_ where the brain is," Ford agreed. "Though you can't count on it. In some of the dimensions I visited, the denizens had brains in unusual places. Sometimes their safety-deposit boxes. It's still probably safer to aim for some spot like a hip or shoulder joint that would disable whatever it is. Of course, it may not _have_ hips or shoulders or arms or legs or even a brain."

"How can we find that out?"

Ford came up to the top of the stairs and put a hand on Dipper's shoulder. "Mason, I just don't know. That's what I hope to learn tomorrow when we make our hike out to Needle Falls. Assuming I'm not prevented from moving about in the valley by deer and bears, that is. I, or perhaps Stan, if I can't do it, will drive you and Wendy out the old logging road as far as it goes. Then it's about four or five miles of difficult hiking through scrub forest and rock scree to the base of the Falls. Ever noticed Needle Falls?"

Dipper shook his head.

"Not surprising. It's a very thin waterfall, only a few inches wide, really, except after thunderstorms. When the light hits it right, it looks from a distance like a silver needle embedded in the cliffs. Most people have never paid it any attention. Anyway, that's our goal. We'll either all three go together—or if the animals still revolt against me, you and Wendy will go—to scan the whole area, especially making a recording with the PAA monitor. That will detect traces of virtually anything abnormal, from an earthly mutation to a ghost to a trans-dimensional intrusion. I'll do it if I can, but if not—my boy, I'm relying on you."

"I won't let you down," Dipper promised. He said his goodnight, and then almost turned to go upstairs to the attic out of sheer force of habit before remembering that Wendy had offered to stay with Mabel that night. So instead he walked to the guest room, lay down on the made-up bed without undressing, and pulled a light blanket over himself.

Then he had nothing to do but sleep.

And wait to hear the Banshee.

* * *

**Chapter 13**

**From the Journals of Dipper Pines:** _Thursday, June 12—It's about 3:30 in the morning, and sure enough, the banshee has just vanished again. She woke us all around 3:00, and we all got up to check it out. But—well, we should have expected it, I guess._

When we opened the door, a thousand animals stood around in solid formation, blocking our way. Ford groaned, "There go my hopes of exploring Needle Falls this morning!"

The animals didn't seem disturbed at the terrible wailing cry of the banshee, but simply stood there staring back at us, the porch light reflecting in their eyes, orange and yellow and green. They didn't threaten us or anything but—well, the bobcats in the front row were the smallest of the predators facing us.

"Grunkle Ford, you go back inside. We got this," Mabel said, and she, Wendy and I went onto the porch. I really thought they'd make way for us, but they didn't. A couple of the pumas started to snarl, and we stopped short before getting to the porch steps. Then Russ called from the darkness behind them: "They are only trying to keep you safe!"

"But we need to talk to the banshee!" I told him. "Help us!"

"I can not command the animals!"

We had to retreat inside, where the others waited. "Come on," I told Grunkle Ford. "I think I know where the banshee might be."

We hurried up the attic steps, and I threw the triangle window open. The banshee hovered in the air, closer than I'd seen her, and though the night was still and dark, except for the light behind us streaming out the window, it looked as if fitful breezes were lifting her hair and her filmy clothing.

Ford knelt on the window seat and leaned out. "Banshee! I am Stanford Pines. I've studied the way of Faerie, and I know you mean us no harm! I feel this threat is focused mainly on me. What can you tell us of the danger this house is in?"

"To be sure, it is grave," the banshee replied in her sorrowful voice. "Poor man! A force beyond even our understanding is breaking free of its prison. Within it burns a rage to kill. We don't know how to stop it at all, at all!"

"I may have a way," Grunkle Ford said. "But the animals won't let us out of the house!"

"'Tis because they owe you and your family a debt of gratitude. You saved them all once before, and they have wisdom enough to know that."

"Can you tell them, somehow, to let us go free?"

"No, that I cannot, for theirs is not my kingdom, nor would they heed me." After a short pause, she added, "Seek those who know and lead the animals best, the rithe sionnaigh, and they may help. I cannot."

"The what? No, don't go yet! How—how long do we have?"

"Not long! It comes before midnight next!"

And with a wail she ascended in the air. It was an overcast night, and before long her dim glow vanished. I knelt on the window seat and stuck my head out. Very faintly, I could see the mass of animals below, waiting patiently. "They may not even let Wendy and Stan and me out!" I told Grunkle Ford.

"No, I seem to be their main concern. While you three go—assuming they will actually let you go—I'll try to unravel the banshee's riddle. Who leads the wild animals? I didn't quite get what she said—something about kings. There isn't a king of the forest in Gravity Falls, as far as I know."

"An eagle, maybe?" I asked.

"I think not. We think of them as noble creatures, but they're really bird-brains. They focus on flying, eating, and nesting."

"Eat worms! Fly south! Nest!" I muttered automatically.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Never mind," I said. But I was wondering, Did Wendy mean that the way it sounded? Nesting together with her—

Somehow I had the taste of feathers in my mouth. I dragged my thoughts away from the memory. "Let's go downstairs and tell the others."

Everyone clustered in the dining room. I noticed that Mabel had put on a sweater and shorts and shoes, and she sort of slipped away, so I followed her and found her about to go out the gift-shop door. "Hey," I said, "you shouldn't go out at night!"

"Dipper," she said, pleading, "I gotta to out! Russ was out there, I heard him! He lives with the animals—maybe he can help us!"

She had that look in her eye. I knew she expected me to argue and then give in, so I decided to surprise her. "OK," I told her. "Mystery Twins. Let's go."

Then she seemed hesitant. "He—he may not help us if you're there."

"So he can tell me to go and I will. Come on. Together."

She gave me the fist bump. "Together."

* * *

The twins stepped out onto the porch. "Hi, animals," Mabel said, waving and smiling. "I'm Mabel. I'm a friend to all you animals! Two of my very best friends in the world are pigs—literally! Won't you let me and my brobro through? Pretty please?"

The deer that guarded that side didn't answer, but stood placidly, making no challenging moves. Mabel led the way down the steps and walked up to a buck and doe who stood shoulder to shoulder. "Come on," Mabel coaxed. "Help a sistah out, guys! You want to keep Grunkle Ford safe, but he's in the house. He's not with us, honest."

She experimentally tried to push through, and the deer grudgingly opened a narrow way—with difficulty because they themselves stood jammed in with the rest of the herd.

Dipper followed her, hoping that he wouldn't pick up any deer ticks. He'd heard about Lyme disease. They saw the end of the herd ahead and he suddenly groaned, "Ugh! Yeck!"

"What's wrong?"

"I just stepped in—something. They're not exactly housebroken, Mabel!"

When they emerged, and after Dipper had scrubbed his right sneaker sole back and forth in the dewy grass a dozen times, they hurried around to the back door. There bears, pumas, foxes, bobcats, and what even looked like three timber wolves had gathered—which is why Mabel hadn't tried that way first—but even they seemed peaceable. "Russ! Where are you?" Mabel yelled.

"Here!"

Dipper was just behind Mabel. She rushed ahead, and in the faint light spilling from the Mystery Shack porch, to his astonishment Dipper saw Mabel throw herself into the redheaded boy's embrace—and they kissed! She even did a leg-pop! "I thought that was only in anime," Dipper mumbled. He cleared his throat. "Hi. Russ. Uh, hello? I'm here, too."

Mabel did not break the embrace. "Russ, this is awful! Do you know how we can persuade these animals to let us come and go?"

Reluctantly, the boy said, "The elder vossen could do it—but they're stubborn and won't listen to me." Again his use of the contraction sounded odd— _they-er_ —as though he hadn’t got the hang of it yet.

"What are they?" Dipper asked. _Let go of my sister!_

Sounding confused, Russ stammered, "They—they are the—the vossen! They are the wisest, the counselors, the ones other animals turn to when—they're the vossen."

"Do you know them?" Mabel asked.

Russ's voice dropped to a low tone, not quite a whisper, but he sounded unsure and not happy. "Yes, yes, I do, but—they—I cannot ask them. I would do anything for you, but—I cannot." He leaned forward and rested his forehead against Mabel's. "They do not understand what is coming. It radiates rage and loathing. Tomorrow night—tonight, now—it will break free and come to this place. We feel the protections you have placed on it. They may hold against it. You must remain inside, no matter what happens. You must."

"Uh-uh," Dipper said. "No way, man. What happens if it can't get to us? What will it do?"

"There is no saying," Russ said, looking over Mabel's shoulder. "Perhaps it will kill anything within reach. You cannot fight it. We cannot. Nothing can, nothing of this earth."

Finally, Mabel pushed away from him. "Russ, you don't understand. We can't just let it kill anything it comes across! I mean, we're Pines! Pineses! We're members of the Pines family, darn it! Me and Dipper and our Grunkle Stan defeated an army of the Undead! We fought off a crazy demon! Three times! We took back the Falls! We have to fight!" She paused. "I guess I gotta work on my inspirational fight rants, huh?"

"Please," Russ said, his voice trembling, "let the others face this thing if you must, but please, Mabel, promise me you will remain inside the wards you have set around this place. If you should die—promise me."

And Mabel hugged him and kissed him again! Then, nearly whispering, she said, "I can't, Russ. I gotta stand with my family. Don't hate me."

"I could never hate you."

Dipper said, "Russ, if you want to protect Mabel, talk to the—uh—vossen? Vossen for us. Or communicate telepathically or whatever, but do it. Maybe—maybe you could ask your folks to help! You say they live in the forest—maybe they understand these things. Will you do that?"

"Yes, my parents. They could—I will try," Russ said, sighing. He took Mabel's hand. "Let me lead you back. At least you need fear no hunting animal when I am with you.” He held out his other hand. "You'd better hold on, too," he said to Dipper.

 _This is weird, this is so weird!_ But Dipper grasped the boy's left hand in his right, and Russ led them forward, toward the back door. _Why does his hand feel so small? Well, only four fingers, but their nails need trimming for sure!_

The sharp scent of predators stung Dipper's nose as the pumas and foxes made way for them. He could hear them, growling in a restrained way— _Together we could rip you apart, but we will let you pass this one time,_ they seemed to be saying.

Two bears pushed through the rest of the animals ahead of them, clearing a path wide enough for all three. A few feet from the steps, Russ stopped. "You go inside. Walk fast. Do not stop until the door is shut behind you. The animals do not have to halt at the edge of the protection, for there's nothing magical about them. They do not mean to hurt you, but instincts are powerful."

"Thank you, Russ," Mabel said.

"You don't have time to kiss him," Dipper warned. "Go!"

He and Mabel nearly leaped up the steps, tore the door open, and rushed inside. As they shut the door, they heard a mournful cry. Not the banshee, not this time, but a wolf howling a dire warning.

* * *

As soon as the sun was up, Ford, Stan, Dipper, and Wendy tried the front door. Deer and possums and raccoons milled in the parking lot and started toward them in a purposeful stride. "Back off, Ford," Stan said.

Ford retreated into the house, and the animals paused, then began to wander around again, restlessly. "Come on, dudes," Wendy growled, grasping her axe. "Let's go."

The creatures did not block their approach to the red and white El Diablo. "Get in an' fasten your seatbelts," Stan growled. "An' let these dumb animals watch out for themselves!"

Dipper took off his backpack and slung it into the rear seat. "Wendy, you want me to get your destabilizer pistol out?"

She had slid into the front seat to sit next to Stan. "Wait'll we get there, Dip. I'm not even sure I'm gonna take it. I got my axe."

Dipper got in next to Wendy. "An axe won't be any good."

"Yeah, listen to Dipper," Stan said as he started the engine. "Ford says ordinary weapons won't help against this thingamajigger from beyond."

Wendy laughed. "Stan, dude, you've been hangin' around Fiddleford too much!"

"Can it, Wendy."

The animals obligingly made way for the car, and once they were down at the foot of the driveway, their path looked clear. Dipper, riding shotgun, jumped out to unhook the chain barring the way to the Shack. For the first time, he saw the signs Stan had nailed up: TEMPORARLY CLOSED THURS-FRI-SAT. OPEN AGAIN MONDAY WITH AMAZING NEW EXHIBITS! SEE YOU AT THE FISHING OPENER!

Stan pulled through, rumbling over the chain, and then Dipper hooked it back into place. "Hope Soos doesn't lose too much business. Uh—Grunkle Stan, what new exhibits are we gonna have on Monday?"

"The head of some fershlugginer thing that thinks it can take out a Pines, for one!"

Wendy punched the roof. "Stan-ley! Stan-ley! Stan-ley!"

"Maybe when we get back," Dipper said, "I could go and talk to the Manotaurs. They might be able to persuade the animals to let Ford come out of the Shack."

"Nah, I don't think so," Stan said. "The forest creatures don't seem to like or trust them."

"I wish I knew what a vossen was."

"A what?" Wendy asked.

"Vossen. Russ told Mabel that a vossen could talk to the animals."

"Ya got me, kid," Stan said.

"Dunno, man," Wendy said.

Stan braked, throwing both teens forward, and then he leaned on the horn. "For the love of—get out of the road, knuckleheads!"

Three foxes trotted across the highway right in front of them, not even looking around as the horn blared.

"Guess they didn't get their invite to the Shack when the others did," Wendy said.

"Stupid foxes," Stan complained, and then he floored the accelerator and made the turn to get to the old logging road and whatever waited at Needle Falls.

* * *

**Chapter 14**

"Wish I'd understood the banshee when she was talking about how to communicate with the animals," Dipper muttered as the car rumbled over the rough old overgrown logging road, barely a dirt track between half-grown firs and pines, so narrow that at times pine boughs brushed both sides of the car.

"You don't remember the word, Dip?" Wendy asked, hanging onto the dash with one hand as the car bounced and slewed.

Dipper was gripping his seat and the door handle. "No. Ford said it was 'kings' or something."

"That other word that you told us Russ said," Wendy said, "is it spelled like—oof! Hit every rock in the road, why don'tcha, Stan?—spelled with a v? V-o-s-s-e-n?"

Blushing, Dipper said, "Uh, I think so. Maybe. Yeah."

"Thought that was it. I looked it up online," Wendy told him in a kind of insinuating tone.

Dipper turned a bright red. "So did I."

They rumbled over a bare, rocky patch, a washout a little lower than the rest of the road. "So, what's it mean?" Stan asked.

"Never mind what it means. It's a verb," Dipper said. "It doesn't help."

Now Stan's voice took on a suspicious note: "A verb, OK, I know what that is. But what I want to know is what's it _mean?_ "

Wendy said delicately, "Stan, dude, it's like a foreign word. I've heard you yell out the English version once or twice, like that time when you hammered your thumb puttin' up some shelves. Point is, it's not a polite word, get what I'm sayin'?"

"Nah. You're confusin' the issue. Make it clear," Stan grumped, steering to avoid a deadfall tree. "What the heck does it mean? Come on, we're all alone in the car. You can tell me."

"Uh—you'd yell at us if we did," Wendy said. "I mean, it's a word that innocent teens like Dipper and me ain't s'posed to know. 'Cept I've known it since I was, like, six."

"Same here," Dipper said. "You see it written on men's room walls a lot—please slow down a little!"

"I won't yell at you!" Stan insisted. "Come on, we're all emotional cripples together here! That oughta mean somethin'! Tell me plain, OK? Or at least give me a hint!"

"It's a synonym for 'making love,'" Dipper said. "That's all I'll tell you."

"Yeah, Dip's right, but it's kinda vulgar," Wendy added. "Very vulgar, I guess. Starts with an F. An' most of the times people yell it, I don't think it refers to havin' sex."

"Wendy!" Stan yelped.

"Told ya, dude! C'mon, me an' Dipper know the facts of life. Don't turn purple, we're not up to anything! Like I say, that word's vulgar. In fact, it can be like, extreme vulgar if you yell it at somebody and add the word 'you' after it."

Stan frowned as his gray eyebrows rose. "You're tellin' me—that Russ guy—you mean he dropped the f-bomb, right?"

"You got it, man," Wendy said. "High five, Dip! We did it!"

They cleanly missed each other's hand because at that moment Stan almost lurched the car right off the logging road. "An' that Russ guy used that nasty word in front of Mabel? I'm gonna pound him into pulp!"

"Whoa!" Dipper yelped as the El Diablo jounced so hard the shocks bottomed out. "Grunkle Stan, don't do that! To be honest I think I misheard the word. Or misspelled it. But it doesn't help either way. Uh, maybe we'd better stop. I don't think we can go much farther."

They had reached a wide place, one where the soil showed some signs of having been chewed and plowed to a messy expanse of mud years back. Now it was just a hummocky, tussocky, ragged mass of uneven ground, though it was like a cul-de-sac, hemmed in on all sides by trees.

"Yeah, you're right. End of the line. I'm gonna turn the car around here an' park it headin' out. That'll help if we need to make a quick getaway, so hang on."

Stan had to jockey the long car back and forth over the uneven ground, but finally he had it heading back down the track. They got out, and he took a key off his keyring. "Here ya go, Wendy," he said, handing it to her. "I can't believe I'm doin' this, but in case I don't make it back, this is a dupe key to the Stanleymobile. I don't come back, you an' Dip get the, what was it? Get the fossen outa here, y'understand?"

"Gotcha," Wendy said in an unusually quiet voice.

And she turned paler than normal when Stan gruffly added, "Dipper gets the car when he's old enough to drive." He went around to the back of the vehicle and opened the trunk. From it he took first a backpack, which he shrugged into. Then he reached in and took out the rifle-sized quantum destabilizer. He hefted it and then hung it over his shoulder on a Safari sling. "Hope this crazy thing works the way Poindexter said. Sight in, center, and fire. Sight in, center, and fire. One shot an' then five minutes to recharge for the full-scale baby, ‘bout a minute for the pistol version. I think I got it."

He stood beside the car waiting as Dipper dug out his backpack. Stan looked—well, not like himself. He was wearing heavy khakis, brown hiking boots, and his olive-green fishing vest over a short-sleeved blue work shirt, plus a sweat-stained canvas bucket hat. Wendy had left her trapper's hat in the car and instead pulled on a brown trucker's cap. She also reached around and tied her hair into a ponytail, then took off her axe sheath and flannel shirt and put the shirt back on with the ponytail inside. "Less snags this way," she said.

Meanwhile, Dipper got into his own backpack. Stan seemed impatient: "You guys ready?"

"Almost." Dipper turned to Wendy. "Here, this one's yours. Take it, please.'

Wendy accepted the pistol version of the destabilizer—more compact than the full-sized one, though the vise-shaped barrel was about a foot long, with a long straight pistol grip that housed a powerful supercapacitor battery made by Fiddleford McGucket himself.

She loosened her belt a little and jammed the weapon in. "If you insist. I'm still relyin' on my axe, though," she said. The axe rode in its scabbard on her back, looking odd because usually her long red hair concealed it.

Dipper, who was in jeans and his trainers, with—of course—his cargo vest and pine-tree hat, stuck his own destabilizer into his belt. "Well. Let's do this."

* * *

To their right the bluffs reared hundreds of feet up, sheer pale-gray stone. Ford had told Dipper that the cliffs around Gravity Falls Valley were basalt—ancient volcanic lava that had engulfed many thousands of square miles of land in layers up to a thousand feet deep, sometimes even more. The seismic cataclysm—or maybe the crash of an interstellar craft—that had created the Valley had eroded or pulverized a huge amount of it.

Had the event never occurred, Gravity Falls would sit atop a plateau. Since it did happen, the town and the surrounding countryside now occupied a niche in a mountainous expanse and, thanks to the rivers flowing in by means of waterfalls and then out again at the mouth of the Valley, level with the more arable land bordering the rocky terrain.

Which did not mean that the Valley always offered comfortable footing or easy going. "Man," Wendy said after just fifteen minutes, "Nobody's ever logged this place off!"

"Yeah, 'cause it's way too rocky," Stan replied.

Plenty of trees grew there, mostly pines—tall lodgepoles, scruffy knobcones, sugar pines with their enormous elongated red-brown cones. But they didn't look exactly healthy. Dipper commented on that.

"Yeah," Wendy said. "I think that's also a reason why nobody's harvested 'em. The lodgepoles especially should be, like, fifty feet tall. These top out at twenty-somethin'. And they're fat enough around to be taller than that. Lotsa brown needles on the white pines, too, like they got a blight or somethin'. But the main reason nobody's logged 'em is the rough ground. I mean, we gotta climb over boulders like every fifty feet!"

That was true, too—chunks of rock the size of cars littered the ground, sometimes in jumbles that made climbing them impractical, so the three had to skirt around their bases, getting tangled in devil's club and peafruit rose, both viciously thorny plants that grew in thickets. Before they'd hiked for an hour, they all had stripes of blood on arms and sometimes legs and cheeks from accidentally swiping against some trailing briars.

They had to climb up a slanting table of stone—an enormous rockfall that sometime in history or before history even began had sheared off the cliffs towering above them and crashed to earth. It was maybe fifty feet long, and as they got to its highest point, Wendy said, "Dudes, there's Needle Falls just over there."

Dipper looked where she was pointing. From the very top of the cliffs, a rivulet of water poured over and then down, tucked into a vertical groove that, perhaps, it had worn away over a million years—or maybe it was simply a natural fault. The morning sun silvered the waterfall, and Dipper saw how it had earned its name—it really did look like a gleaming, gargantuan needle, stuck vertically into the earth, with the cliffs as its backdrop.

"Amazin'," Stan huffed, his tone sarcastic. "Now what're we s'posed to look for?"

"I'm on it." Dipper opened his backpack and began to scan.

* * *

"Did you get everything?" Dipper asked. "Over."

"Yes," Ford's voice crackled through the walkie-talkie speaker—cell phones had only one bar way out here, though Dipper had managed to transmit the data over a phone frequency. "I'm analyzing it now. Dipper, it appears that the main anomaly is from half a mile to a mile nearly directly north of you, and at the base of the cliffs. Did you copy that?"

"Mile to half a mile, base of cliffs," Dipper said. "Over."

"Now, you don't have to go there if it looks threatening, but—well, it would be helpful. Over."

"Gimme that." Stan grabbed the hand-held radio. "OK, Poindexter, listen good: We're goin' to have a look. If anything happens and all of us die, it's your fault. I mean it's all on you, Braniac. Over an' out!"

He switched off the walkie-talkie and, grinning, handed it back to Dipper. "Not that I think anything's gonna happen, but if it does—Ford's always layin' guilt on me. Let him stew in his own for a little while! Ya ready, knuckleheads?"

"Let's go," Wendy said. "Sooner we do it, sooner we can get outa here. This place is, like, cursed, dudes."

Dipper thought that had the ring of truth. From the edge of the fallen block of basalt, they looked out over an expanse of dead, dying, or weirdly corrupted trees, pines that corkscrewed unnaturally, oaks that spread leafless branches wide but had perhaps three tufts of distorted leaves at the crown, leaves ten times larger than they should be, and a sickly, dingy green.

No birds sang, no woodpeckers disturbed the silence. They had seen no squirrel, none of the commonly-seen Townsend's chipmunks—not the dainty Eastern version, but bulky animals often a foot long, nose to tail tip. Not a possum, not a mouse—not even an insect.

Deathlike silence reigned.

They had one path down from the summit of the block, a chipped-off corner where they could clamber down ten feet to the top of a hill. "This way," Wendy said.

A nearly-exhausted Dipper wondered if he'd have enough strength left for the return hike. Stan, for a wonder, didn't complain, but slogged on with determination. They reached a place where loose rubbly stone lay in a curving hill before them. "Gotta climb it," Wendy said.

"Oy," Stan muttered. "This is a real delight."

Up a good twelve feet over loose and sometimes shifting stones, and then they peeked over—

"Whoa!" Dipper exclaimed.

"What happened here?" Stan asked.

They were at the edge of a quarter-mile crater—a bowl-like depression, filled with broken, cracked, jumbled stone. Within it dead trees lay in radiating circles. One, a lodgepole pine—though it looked stunted and diseased, like all the trees in the area—lay within Stan's reach. He grabbed a branch to pull himself up, and it fell to pieces in his hand. "It's like papier mâché," he said. "Completely rotten! And it stinks like decayed fungus!"

"It hasn't been down all that long," Wendy said. "Couple-three years, maybe. Whatever blasted out this crater happened recently, dudes."

Needle Falls plunged down into a pool just beyond the far side of the crater. The splatter of water was the only sound. The earth itself seemed to be holding its breath.

"Oh, my gosh!" Dipper had one of Ford's meters on and pointing down into the cavity. "This is off the scale! Guys, there's something alive down there-but these readings aren't like any earthly life form!"

Stan shaded his eyes. "Don't see nothin'."

Wendy said, "Me neither, dude. You sure the machine's accurate?"

"Yes! It's something—maybe invisible! But—but it's not traveling in any direction. Seems to be stationary."

"Maybe it's dead," Stan said.

"No, I don't think so. Readings are too strong. Maybe—"

He broke off as Wendy grabbed his arm. "Shhh! Somethin's happening!"

Above the noise of the waterfall came scraping sounds, the clack of stone on stone. Staring down into the crater, Dipper felt the hair on the back of his neck prickling.

One of the smaller stones in the central pile teetered, slipped, and clattered down a few feet. The stones at the top, where it had been, heaved and made a grinding sound.

And from beneath them rumbled a guttural growl.

"It's digging its way out!" Dipper yelled.

* * *

**Chapter 15**

"Run, kids!" Stan yelled, struggling to his feet and trying to find the switch to activate the quantum destabilizer. "I'll hold it off as long as I can!"

Wendy grabbed his backpack strap and dragged him. "No, you don't, you old crab! We're all getting' away, or none of us is!"

Stumbling in her wake, Stan muttered, "Are."

They slid down the rock pile at the rim of the crater, starting small avalanches of clattering stones. Dipper said, "Huh?"

"None of us _are,"_ Stan said, just before hitting the forest floor, taking three flailing steps, and falling flat on his face. He pushed himself to his knees, spat out some brown pine needles, stood, and said, "Grammar, Wendy!"

Wendy bent and picked up his glasses, which she handed to him, and then yelled, "Shut up and come on!"

The three ran, catching toes on roots and banging into the occasional pine trunk. A winded Stan chuckled and asked Dipper, "Did ya see what I did there?"

"Hang on," Dipper said, stumbling to a halt. "Wait, wait! I don't hear anything—listen."

Wendy stopped a few feet away and tilted her head. "I don't either, No stones or anything. I thought it was about to bust through! Think it stopped for some reason? Maybe it can't, I dunno, sense us or somethin' if we're outside the crater."

"'Cause, see, in the Fearamid, Ford corrected _me,_ " Stan continued.

"Guys, I'm gonna climb back up the crater wall for a quick look," Dipper told them.

Wendy grabbed his backpack strap, too. "Hang on. I got a better idea, dude. That whitebark there's tall enough for me to see over the edge of the crater. You dudes hang out next to the trunk and keep me covered in case somethin' comes tear-assin' outa that hole. 'Scuse my language, Stan."

"It's excused," Stan said. "See, Ford told me that my grammar—"

"Can it, Stan!" both Wendy and Dipper said in unison.

Stanley crossed his arms. "One a' these days you'll be old an' nobody'll listen to you! Then I'm gonna laugh my ass off! 'Scuse the language."

Wendy had looped a climbing belt around the pale truck of the pine and went effortlessly up, having no problem with the limbs—though a couple of these were so brittle that they fell off when she brushed them. "This one's kinda rotten, but sound up to here. OK," she called down when she was about twenty feet up. "I can see the mound of rocks in the middle of the crater, guys. It's not movin' or anything."

"Why did it stop?" Dipper asked.

"I dunno," Stanley said, adjusting the sling that carried his destabilizer. "Maybe it's got no sunblock or somethin'. I mean, it's a hot day already!"

The ground beneath their feet trembled.

"Whoa!" Wendy said. "Comin' down, dudes! Look out below!"

Stan raised the destabilizer and pointed it in the general direction of the crater. "Don't see anything! What now?"

The rocks on their side of the crater rim surged and began to tumble. "It's burrowing!" Dipper yelled. "It's underground and burrowing! Let's move!"

Wendy leaped the last ten feet to the ground and made a three-point landing on boots and heel of hand. She snatched up her pack and said, "Go, go, go!"

They reached the big tilted slab, clambered up the broken corner, and then ran down to where the tilt merged into the downslope of a hillside. Behind them they heard the crash of toppling trees.

"Like ta see it move that big rock!" Stan gasped. "It must weigh like a hundred thousand tons!"

Something hissed and gurgled behind them, and Dipper stopped and turned. "Guys? We better hurry!"

"Oh, my God!" Wendy said, her eyes wide.

Behind them, the upper edge of the stone block had become white-hot and was . . . _flowing._ Bubbling, viscous red-hot magma boiled and leaped and blackened into strings and blobs of rock as it arched through the air. Billows of steam roiled from it, and the tops of trees nearby caught fire. "The rock's turning back into lava!" Dipper said. "Run!"

"Yeah, easy for you to say," Stan griped, but he made good time. They plunged through the thorn thickets, losing patches of clothing and skin, and finally broke out into the clearing where the Stanleymobile waited. "Pile in, pile in!" Stan yelled. He opened the back door and tossed the quantum disruptor in, along with his backpack.

Dipper and Wendy tossed in their packs, too. Stan barked, "Wendy, you take shotgun, roll down the window, and get that cockamamie pistol ready! Dipper, backseat, driver's side, get the window down and be ready to shoot if you see anything comin' after us!"

Dipper shoved the rifle-sized weapon over and got into the seat just as Stan floored the accelerator. The big heavy car leaped forward as Dipper frantically rolled down the window and leaned out. From the forest behind them, white smoke billowed up into the air—by melting the stone, the thing had started a forest fire. Dipper saw more trees falling, not burning but apparently undermined. He fumbled with the pistol and finally got it out and primed. _One shot, then one or two minutes to recharge._

If the ride out had been rough, the one back threatened to crack their teeth. More than once a pine bough lashed the back of Dipper's head. But the El Diablo's powerful engine roared and, though it swerved and sometimes lurched, the car kept to the track until they burst out onto the paved road. Stan swerved wide to miss an oncoming, horn-blaring logging truck, ran off onto the shoulder, and then jerked the car back into the proper lane. "We lost it?"

"Think so," Dipper said. "I don't see any more trees falling, and we left the fire behind."

"It's prob'ly still comin', though," Wendy said. Her hair had come partly loose from inside her shirt and long red strands whipped through the open window as she craned to look back. "Just can't make good time underground, is all.""

"Better get on the horn to Ford," Stanley said. "Tell him to call the forestry department about the fire."

"You think those firefighter guys'll be safe, Stan?" Wendy asked, giving him a sharp look.

"Yeah, first because whatever big ugly is out there ain't mad at them, but us. Second, because they'll send planes over with retardant before anybody goes out there on foot. Geeze Louise, everything hurts!"

"Want me to drive?" Wendy asked.

"Nah, you'll get blood all over the wheel."

"Wait, what?" Dipper leaned over the seat. "Wendy, are you OK?"

"Just thorns, dude. She held up her left hand. An ugly deep gash about two inches long showed on the pinky edge, still dripping blood. She ripped a sleeve off her shirt. "Seems like I'm always doin' this," she muttered, binding the wound. "Dipper, man, you got no room to talk. Your whole face is bloody!"

Dipper put his hand to his cheek and felt the ripped places where he'd run through thorns. His palm came away red. "Didn't even feel it!" he said. "Hang on, I got bandages in my back—"

"Focus, Dipper!" his great-uncle said. "Call Ford First, and then you'll have time to bleed!"

From his backpack Dipper got out the walkie-talkie and also a four-inch square of gauze. He tore the package open with his teeth and pulled out the pad, which he pressed against his cheek as he said, "Dipper to Ford, are you there? Come in!"

He repeated the call twice before the radio sizzled and crackled and he heard Ford's distorted voice: "Ford here, Dipper. What's happening?"

"There's a forest fire breaking out at the base of Needle Falls," Dipper said. "And something big's under the ground and trying to break through to the surface. It's following us, but we got away!"

"Over," Stanley said.

Ford again, urgently: "Did you get any readings?"

"Yeah, but I haven't sent them because reception out there at the crater was, like, no bars!"

"Over," Stanley insisted.

"Crater? Never mind, tell me later. As soon as you're in telephone range—"

"Wait a minute, wait a minute, let me see—yeah, I can transmit now. I'll get off the radio and you'll have the data in a few seconds!"

From behind the wheel, Stanley scolded, "Dipper, ya gotta say 'Over' when you finish! For cryin' out loud, what's the use of havin' radio protocol if you just ignore it?"

"Doesn't matter," Dipper said, peeling off the blood-stained gauze pad because he needed both hands. He found the meter he'd used, set it to transmit, and pressed a button. After a couple of seconds, it buzzed to show that it had sent the data on.

He felt something pressing against his face and looked up. Wendy was holding a little green patch of flannel against his cheek. "Still drippin' some, man," she said.

"Aw, Wendy, you're all scratched up, too!"

"Eh, Corduroys heal fast. You got a couple deep ones there on your right cheek."

"Chadley ain't pretty no more?" Dipper asked, giving her a crooked smile, though now his face throbbed with the pain.

She chuckled. "Aw, man, you'll do. You'll do."

* * *

The moment they got back to the Shack, Mabel immediately ran for the gift-shop first-aid kit without being asked. Melody and Mabel applied antibiotic ointment and bandages to Dipper's and Wendy's wounds.

Stan's legs had been spectacularly striped by the thorns, and in addition to her hand, Wendy had one vicious black curved thorn more than an inch long stuck deeply in her side just under her ribs, plus a couple of scrapes on elbows and knees.

Sheila took Stan into the bathroom to patch up his legs, but Wendy and Mabel got their treatment in the dining room. Mabel cut adhesive tape and wrapped bandages around the worst places and shook her head over all the damage the two had sustained.

Dipper's chest had suffered, along with his cheek. The amount of blood that had dripped onto his vest from his cheek or oozed through his shirt and into the fabric amazed him.

Mabel said, "OK, I'm gonna try not to get this tape into any of your chest hair. Don't think you'll need stitches, but some of these are really nasty, brobro!"

"We gotta finalize getting' that clinic into town," Stanley said, coming in from the bathroom. His khakis showed about a dozen rips, most of them brownish-red with drying blood.

"What?" Melody asked. "Clinic?"

Stan sank into his old chair, and Sheila stood behind him and massaged his shoulders. "Feels good, hon. Yeah, Melody, me an' Ford convinced the town council that this place needs a clinic. Got a good site picked out an' everything, an' the price is right. All's we gotta do is attract a doctor and a couple nurses, and we could have it up an' runnin' by next month."

"That'd be cool," Wendy said. "Then when my dad gets conked by a falling tree I wouldn't have to drive him all the way to Hirschville!"

"Dude," Soos asked, "are you an' Ford, like, payin' for all that?"

"Nah, just seed money," Stan said. "Fiddleford's kickin' in some, too. Once it's started, it should sustain itself. Town will keep the rent minimal in exchange for havin' medical services available."

"That's a great idea," Sheila said. "And I'll bet you two won't take an ounce of credit for it!"

"Who needs every charity in a hundred-mile radius hittin' me up?" Stanley asked. "Yeah, me an' Ford'll keep quiet about our part, but not necessarily from modesty."

Soos said, "Mr. Pines, let me an' Melody throw some in, too. We got some good savings stashed away, and I keep worrying, you know, about our son. If Little Soos ever got real bad sick, I'd want somebody close to take him to, dawg!"

"'S OK with me if you contribute. We'll talk about it later," Stanley said. "Right now, though, I'm starvin'. It's past lunchtime."

"Oh, right," Soos said. He called, "Hey, T.K.! Cook us some burgers and franks, willya, dawg!"

"Coming right up!" responded the O'Grady boy's voice from off in the snack bar.

"Why's he even here?" Dipper asked. "The Shack is closed!"

"Yeah, but he was worried about me," Mabel said as she put away the bandages. "So he came over this morning and he's been making himself useful. And you gotta admit, he cooks good food!"

"Well—I could use a burger," Dipper confessed. "And fries."

"Yeah, get Abuelita to make me one of her Stan Specials," Stanley told Soos. "She'll know what that means."

"Right away, Mr. Pines, dawg, sir."

"I could eat, too," Wendy said. "Burgers and fries all around? Anybody want a hot dog?"

"Four!" Mabel said. "One with chopped tomatoes and peppers, one with onions and ketchup, one with relish and mustard, and one with chocolate syrup and mini-marshmallows." When they stared at her, she asked, "What, can't a girl have dessert?"

"OK, it's your stomach, girl," Wendy said with a shrug. "I'll go help T.K."

"I'll come, too!" Mabel said, hopping up with the first-aid kit in her hand.

"So—where's Poindexter?" Stanley asked Soos. "He get the word out on the fire?"

"Uh, he's downstairs in his lab," Soos said. "Dunno about the fire, but I think he's, like, doing secret research or some junk? He prob'ly doesn't want to be disturbed, dude."

"Well, too bad 'cause I'm gonna disturb him anyhow. Come on, Dip. Hey, Soos, call us when the grub's ready, OK?"

"You got it!"

"Thanks! Back in a minute, Sheila. You'd better go put in your food order. Come on, Dip." Dipper followed his Grunkle down the stairs and then into the elevator. Stan pushed the button for the second floor down. "How'd you know where he'll be?" Dipper asked.

"'Cause the indicator said it was comin' up from two, Dip. So that's where Ford got off."

"Hey, good deduction, Grunkle Stan!"

Stan grinned. "Yeah, Ford didn't get all the brains in the family, kiddo. I just usually channel my smarts in a different direction."

The elevator doors opened, and they stepped out into the peculiar reddish light that Ford favored. He sat at a computer console, and he looked around. "Oh, you're back. Good, good."

"The fire—"

"It's out already," Ford said. "The fire service sent out a couple of planes, and they were able to extinguish the blaze. Fortunately, the woods in that area are sparse, the trees widely separated, and the ground is stony. No great damage."

"Yeah, tell us about it," Stan growled. "In those very woods we got pretty beat up tryin' to get your crummy readings, Ford! Ain't you forgettin' to tell us somethin'?"

Stanford first looked surprised, then said, "Oh, yes! The readings are valuable!"

"He can't say it," Stan told Dipper. "Geeze, he's supposed to be the smart one, an' he don't ever once remember to say it!"

"Oh," Ford said, sounding embarrassed. "Sorry. Thank you, Dipper and Stanley."

"Yeah, that's more like it." Stanley limped over to the computer. "Oy, feels like my legs got burned!"

Dipper asked, "What did you find out from the data, great-uncle Ford?"

"Well—anomalous life-form readings. In some ways familiar—but I'm not actually sure, so maybe I shouldn't say anything until—"

"Stanford!" Stanley snapped. " _Look_ at us! Dipper's face all ripped up, an' poor Wendy lost a strip of skin on the side of her hand that looks nasty and prob'ly really needed stitches, and my legs are like the Buchanan clan tartan—red crisscrossin' streaks all over 'em! Ya got somethin', spill it!"

"I apologize," Stanford said. He bit his lip. "All right. I'm still not sure, but the signature I got from the readings—the pattern of resonance—Dipper, Stanley, this thing is not of our world. I'd almost say it was from Bill Cipher's universe, but it's not quite that, either. Similar, and yet—I don't know. My best guess is that it may be something left over from Weirdmageddon—something that perhaps didn't get pulled back through the Rift. If it really is one of Bill's hench-maniacs—well, we face hard decisions."

"What's hard? Kill it!" Stan said.

"That may be difficult. It's not made of the same kind of matter as an earthly animal. But perhaps we _can_ kill it, or if not, at least contain it."

"Contain? Ya mean like that Shapeshifter thing you got froze in your bunker?"

"Yes, exactly."

"Oh, great," Stanley groaned. "All we need's for that thing to thaw out one day. And you're gonna have _two_? What are you, nuts?"

Ford sighed. "Well—the other way would be to open a portal to the creature's own dimension, but that's extremely risky, and I dismantled the portal, anyway. We might create another Rift."

"Throw it down the Bottomless Pit for all I care," Stan said. "But figure out a way to kill it or get rid of it for good. Ford, we're out of time! It's comin' for us, burrowin' toward us like a mole! And the danged thing can generate enough heat to melt freakin' _rocks!_ "

"Yes," Ford said thoughtfully. "If it did come into our reality during Weirdmageddon, it was shielded from Earth's sun by the Rift overhead. You remember the odd scarlet tint of the sky, and how the sun was barely visible through all the haze. Now, under a clear sky, the radiation of the sun just might weaken it or render it helpless."

"Then build a great big tanning lamp!" Stanley yelled. "Or figure some way to tie it up so the sun can, what, dissolve it like a vampire?"

"Stanley, that doesn't actually happen. It's only in the movies. Vampires can go out in the sun if they want to—"

"Get your mind off vampires!" Stanley said. "Figure some way we can get this thing to the surface when it comes to the Shack! If the sun'll kill it, drag it into the sunshine!"

"Great," Dipper said. "But what happens if it gets here at night?"

For a moment the two elder Pines twins just stared at each other.

"Then heaven help us," Ford said quietly.

* * *

**Chapter 16**

Though time moved slowly, its passing gnawed at them as long as they could do nothing but wait. About three in the afternoon, though, Mabel rushed into the dining room, where Ford, Stan, Wendy, and Dipper were going over their experiences that morning in hopes of spotting some angle.

Then Mabel, T.K. at her side, came thundering in to report that they'd solved at least one puzzle. "Hey, guys! It wasn't 'vossen' that Russ said! It was 'foxen!'"

"Huh?" Dipper asked.

"Tell 'em!" Mabel said, pushing T.K. forward. His eyes darting nervously, he punched his round glasses back up on his nose. His apologetic smile flickered like a candle in a breeze as he stammered, "We-well, th-that's what I think, at least. Actually 'vossen' is a real cognate word in Dutch, but in Belgium it's, well, it's a very rude term."

"Yeah, we kinda doped that out. Typical," Stan grunted. "All them hot Belgian waffles got nothin' better to do than to think up new dirty words."

T.K. looked uncertain, but Ford said quietly, "Go on, son."

"Well, the Irish term for foxes, plural I mean, is _sionnaigh_ , but there's also a little-known ancient sort of Scots-Irish-English pidgin language, and back around the tenth century, 'foxen' meant a special kind of foxes. Plural again. It's a word of, I guess, respect? Like the important foxes, or the strong foxes."

" _Sionnaigh,_ " Ford murmured. "T.K., could 'foxen' possibly mean 'rulers of foxes?'"

"Um . . . yeah, I think so. That would be . . . uh . . . a possible connotation," T.K. said. Everyone was staring at him, and he squirmed, looking as if he wanted to apologize for being alive. "See, I—well, I’m interested in writing plays and, you know, other stuff, and, um. At school they call me the 'word nerd,' he said. "Be-because I'm so fascinated with language."

"You seem to be doin' pretty good, kid," Stan said with a grin.

"Yes, thank you, T.K. You know, what you say makes a lot of sense." Ford turned to Mabel. "Would you go out— _not_ into the yard, just on the porch—and call and see if Russ is anywhere around? It may be vitally important to speak to him."

And Mabel tried—they heard her yelling for Russ on front, back, and side porches and then from out of the windows up on the attic floor for about ten minutes—but no answer came. However, she clattered down the stairs and said, "Guys, come up to the attic. I think you ought to see this!"

They crowded upstairs. Through the bedroom window they could see at an angle the bluffs far across the treetops. "Watch," she said. "See? There it goes!"

"Whoa, what was that, some kinda explosion?" Stan asked.

"No, I don't think so," Ford told him. "I'm going to get my binoculars. I wish we had a clearer view."

"Roof time!" Wendy said.

"Yeah!" Dipper hadn't meant to yell. "I mean—well, you've been up there already, great-uncle Ford. You know."

"Good suggestion," Ford said. "Maybe I won't fall off!"

Ford went downstairs and then to the basement, re-emerging with a somewhat battered and very long pair of binoculars, at least a foot from eyepiece to objective lens. "Naval surplus," he explained. "It's about the strongest you can find, 20-50x100."

"English?" Stanley asked.

"It magnifies the image twenty times, with a zoom up to fifty times. The objective lenses—the big ones in the front, Stanley—are 100 millimeters in diameter."

He slung the binoculars around his neck, then climbed up to the trap door, Dipper and Wendy following on the ladder. He pushed open the trap door, then helped Dipper and Wendy through. They had to lean on the steep-pitched roof to hold their balance as Ford said, "I'd say my best choice would be to look over the peak of the roof, holding on with my elbows. Then I can steady the image."

"Go for it, dude," Wendy said.

They clambered up and lay on their stomachs against the hot redwood shingles, Wendy and Dipper flanking Ford. Dipper shaded his eyes. "I'm not sure what we're looking for—whoa! That, way out there?"

"Trees falling," Ford said, first finding the target, then peering through the binoculars. "Three or four trees, as far as I can see. Big dust cloud. Not an explosion, but a collapse. The . . . entity is still miles away. My guess is that it's still tunneling underground, and it's moving fairly slowly, no more than a slow walking pace."

"But still it's comin'," Wendy said.

"Yes, I'm afraid so."

"We'd better get ready," Dipper said.

"Agreed."

They climbed down again to find Mabel on her phone, and a moment later another little piece of the puzzle clicked into place: "Grunkle Ford!" she said. "I've been talking to Grenda, and she thinks she knows what that thing is!"

"What?" Ford asked.

"Just a sec, I gotta tell everybody," Mabel said into the phone. Then "Dipper! Wendy! You remember this! When that monster charged the Shacktron and shoved us way back, but then we stopped it and went to full power?"

"Yeah!" Wendy said. "I'd been, like, ridin' eyeball bats before it ran into us! We like grabbed hold of it, put the Shacktron up to full power, and swung it around and around and then—"

"Threw it miles away!" Dipper said. "And it flew off in the direction of Needle Falls! It crashed down like—like a meteor! There was an explosion and everything. I do remember!"

"One of Bill's henchmen, then! What kind of creature was it?" Ford asked eagerly.

Dipper said, "I . . . didn't see it. Mabel was keeping look-out."

Wendy and Dipper looked at Mabel. She waved her arms. "It was like if a purple gorilla and a loaf of grape-flavored bread had a really nasty baby!"

"Also," Wendy added, "it was wearin' like a little tiny party hat. Clown hat kinda deal. You know, the kind that looks like a cone!"

"It's not in the Journals," Dipper said. "I think I'd recognize it from that description."

"No, no," Ford muttered, looking concerned. "I ran across something like that, but it was after I'd been pulled through the Portal. I think—I'm afraid—it just may be an interdimensional murderer and thug, the Being Whose Name Must Never Be Said!"

"Whoa," Wendy said. "What do they call him for short?"

"Xanthar," Ford told her. "Whoops! I said it. Shouldn't have done that, but I'm exhausted." He sank onto the sofa. "If I'm right, it's one of Bill's oldest henchmen. Nearly mindless, capable of scheming and hatred rather than logical thought, incredibly strong, driven by negative emotions. And if I recall—I discovered this during my exile in other dimensions, mind, when I had no Journal to record my impressions—it comes from one of the worlds in the Mu 09 dimension. That means its molecular make-up is quite different from Bill's—or from any life form that has ever existed on Earth."

"How does that help us?" Dipper asked.

Ford shook his head. "It doesn't. But I'll think about it. And I'll adjust all the destabilizers so they'd have an increased effect against Mu-type chemistry. Right now, that's all I can come up with. However, this might possibly be worth knowing: The Mu dimension suns are strongly red-shifted—daylight on every planet in that reality ranges from a very dim and faint orange to a blood-red hue. Illumination and some warmth, but not to compare with stars in our reality. Earth's sun shines in a completely different spectrum, which would be physically painful to a Mu-creature—and that could explain why it avoids the daylight."

"Wait, wait," Mabel said. She spoke into her phone: "Sorry for neglecting you. Thanks, Grenda! No, no, don't come over. Tell Candy, too. Right now we've got a situation. Really, it's better if you don't, 'cause it's not the kinda thing you can punch out. Tell you about it tomorrow. Thanks, we'll need some good luck. Yeah, you too!" She broke the connection and then looked up, her eyes wide and fearful. "Guys! When the sun sets, that thing can come out from underground!"

"Yes," Ford agreed. "I'm afraid it will."

"But—all the forest animals! Sev'ral Timez! Russ is out there, too!"

"It won't be stealthy, and if they avoid its path, they should be all right," Ford assured her. "It has a focus and it's coming straight for us. Especially since somebody unwisely spoke its name."

"Dude, that was you," Wendy pointed out.

Ford sighed. "I'm afraid so. Between the two of us, Stan isn't always the screw-up!"

"Hah!" Stan, a can of Pitt Cola in his hand, came in, wearing only a vest-type undershirt and striped boxes. His legs had practically been mummified in Band-Aids. "'Bout time you admitted that!"

"I make mistakes, Stanley," Ford said, pushing his glasses up to rub his eyes. "I acknowledge that."

"Yeah, dude," Wendy said. "But hey, what about you, Stan? Correctin' my grammar when we were about to be, like, bulldozed or burned to a crisp! You were, like, tryin' to be like Stanford. You oughta admit _that!_ "

"Correcting grammar?" Ford asked with a lopsided smile. " _You,_ Stanley?"

"Pot and kettle, smart guy! Hey, I was tryin' to relieve the tension. Besides, that's about the only rule of grammar I can even remember, except for 'I before E except sometimes when it's the other way around.'"

Stanford chuckled. "Yes, I remember making that mistake—correcting someone's grammar—when it really wasn't a good time. I guess we're closer than either of us really admits."

"Yeah, or wants to! So fill me in—I overheard a little of that. What did you find out, and how does it help us?"

"Very little and probably not very much," Ford said, but he and the others started to explain.

* * *

_Away from the bluffs and away from the stone the burrowing became easier. The will to destruction that burned in the creature functioned as its compass, focusing on a spot far away, but not so far that it could never be reached. Straight. The important thing was to keep going straight, cutting through dirt, through tree roots, through every impediment._

_Above it, weakened trees, some hundreds of years old, gave way and fell to the ground, their branches clutching empty air, leaves following a ragged arc, birds scattering from the twigs. In the creature’s path, small underground creatures, chipmunks, rabbits, even burrowing owls, either fled down their tunnels or perished as it drew near, its aura stealing the life from them without the monstrosity's even quite touching them._

_It pushed the bodies aside. It did not feed in the earthly sense. It had no mouth. It thrived on energy—and during the years buried under the rock fall that its crash to earth had caused, it had drawn on heat from deep in the earth._

_It could not burn. Its flesh and bone were not combustible in an earth atmosphere, and it could withstand any temperature that natural forces could produce. However, it could, and did, absorb energy from heat. Or from chemicals, or lightning. The old Earth adage goes, "What does not kill me makes me stronger."_

_Its version might have been "What cannot kill me makes me stronger."_

_There for a time, it held hope—if it could experience any positive emotion, which is doubtful—that its mission might be easily accomplished. It had sensed some of Bill's old adversaries close, coming to it! On the surface, only yards away—_

_But the sun broke through in stinging shafts when it attempted to burst out and the rocks above it shifted and it had to dive for protection—_

_Only the light, the hateful light, could hurt it, and light could not kill._

_Still, living things avoid pain._

_And the light hurt._

_It had tried to kill the intruders anyway, tried to trap them beneath rocks or squash them as it made trees fall, had even squandered half of its stored energy in trying to burn them by transforming hardened lava back into steaming, all-consuming magma._

_It had forgotten how fast the little creatures could move through air._

_In the light of the sun._

_But it had learned during its captivity and slow awakening and recuperation, yes, it had learned._

_Daylight does not last forever._

_Darkness was coming_

_Darkness was coming._

* * *

**Chapter 17**

Dipper thought he'd made an unnoticed getaway, but halfway to the bonfire clearing, Mabel caught up to him: "You shouldn't be outside the Shack!"

"Go home," he told her, stopping. "I'll be back before dark. I have something I have to do."

"Yeah, you're gonna go talk to Bill Cipher!" she said, balling her fists. "You _know_ you can't trust him! This—whatever it is, monster, it worked for him! No way am I leaving you! It's too dangerous!"

"Not for me," Dipper said, taking both her hands in his. "I'll explain it all someday. You, though—go back to the Shack."

She kicked his shin, something she hadn't done in a long, long time. "You can't make me. You might as well give up, Brobro!"

"OK," Dipper said unwillingly. "I'm going to try to make this quick. But you have to wait outside the clearing."

And so inside the clearing around the Cipher statue, Dipper sat on the fallen timber again and willed himself into the Mindscape and shrank himself down to Bill size. For a change Bill did not seem in a lighthearted mood: "Thought you'd be back, Pine Tree. You could've brought Shooting Star along, you know. I don't bite."

Dipper gave him a sardonic grin. "Maybe not, but she does. You know what we're facing?"

"Ummmm . . . that would be a big no, kid. _Not_ omniscient, remember? And I've been concentrating on rebuilding myself, so I haven't been watching the Falls through my psychic portholes. I just know something weird's up, what else is new. However, I can read that you're more than usually upset, so it must be big."

"The Being Whose Name Must Never Be Said," Dipper told him.

The yellow triangle paled to white. "Whoa! You're joking, right? Impossible! He didn't get pulled back into my dimension when the Rift collapsed?"

Dipper shook his head. "Apparently he got buried under tons of rock before all that happened."

Slowly Bill's color returned. He hooked his cane over his left arm, crossed it over his—well, chest area—and cradled his right elbow in his left hand. He tapped the side of his—well, facial region—with his right forefinger as though in deep thought. "Yeah, yeah, that might work. Gravity Falls has a way of containing weirdness. If he was buried under Gravity Falls rock, that could've shielded him from the field collapse. And you say he's free now?"

"Yeah. He dug his way out, and he's coming to attack us in the Shack, but he's burrowing underground—"

Bill snapped his fingers. "Because the Earth's sun weakens him!" Then he drooped. "But even that wouldn't kill him. Just make him dormant until the sun set again."

Dipper got to the big question: "I know he was one of your henchmaniacs, and I don't know how loyal you are to him, but since he's a rogue now, I have to ask: How do we fight him?"

"Geeze, kid, you ask the tough ones! As for loyalty, hah! He wasn't what you'd call my best buddy, Pine Tree. Even I couldn't always control him, and now—let's be honest, OK—I got no use for him. My main job is rebuilding myself, and the last thing I want's for that dummy to sniff me out and let certain extradimensional people know I'm still trapped and pretty weak in this dimension."

"Then help us fight him!"

"I'm thinking it over!" Bill manifested a violin and scraped out a horrible tune as he mused, and then the instrument vanished. "OK, maybe if—no, wait, that wouldn't work. I'd have to give him orders personally. And he can't even penetrate the Mindscape—not enough mind there to do it—so I can't communicate with him that way. I suppose you wouldn't consent to be my puppet again—"

"Not Mabel, either," Dipper said flatly. "You're more dangerous than that thing could ever be."

"Hah! Boy, are you right about that!" Then Bill drooped. "Tell you the truth, kid, I couldn't pull off the switch anyway, not in my current state. Too low on power. But talk about dangerous? Let me lay it out so at least you'll know what you're dealing with: In your dimension, Xanthar—don't flinch, this is the Mindscape! He can't even sense us here, let alone hear us—Xanthar can kill with a touch. He absorbs life energy—like all at once. Don't lay a finger on him, or let him touch you. He can also emit bursts of energy—electricity, fire, sound waves, what have you. That drains him pretty good, so he won't do those often. Hey, that barrier around the Shack—"

"Is up again. And we reinforced it," Dipper told him.

"Good! That'd be old Sixer's thinking, wouldn't it? That'll hold Xanthar off, and he's too stupid to figure any way around it. But remember—he can burrow! Protect the lower levels of the Shack, too. Yeah, yeah, don't look shocked, Sixer used to invite me down there from time to time, I know all about them. But as for getting rid of Xanthar—I'm stymied. You can't open the Rift again, and you probably wouldn't want to. Hmm. OK, this is all I got: If Sixer could somehow push him through into the dimension Mu 214/!—want to write that down?"

Dipper complained, "I can't write anything down in the Mindscape! But I got it, Mu 214, slash, exclamation point."

"Yeah. That's where his homies hang out. 'Course he's wanted by what passes for the police there, but if you throw him through, at least the authorities of his own species should be able to latch onto him, and he couldn't ever get back. Without me, he couldn't even find this reality in the infinity of multiverses."

Dipper groaned. "The portal doesn't exist any longer! Is there any way just to kill him?"

Bill paced on air, arms behind his back. "Killing a Muthon, killing a Muthon . . . None that I know of, Pine Tree. You can slice him, dice him, and cover him with a savory garlic al Fredo sauce and one of those little pieces will regenerate. You _can_ stun him with Sixer's quantum destabilizer, the thingamabob that did a job on my hat if you'll recall, but unless Stanford's built one that'll fire a ten-foot-diameter beam, it ain't gonna kill him. And he'll regenerate twice as mad as he is now."

Dipper felt time tugging at his elbow. "Listen, Bill—if this is on the level, if any of it helps us beat him, I'll bring you a gold nugget."

"Really? You're not pulling my leg?" Bill popped off his right leg and held it out toward Dipper. "You're pulling it, aren't you? Give it a tug!"

"No tricks, Bill," Dipper said. "You told me that gold will help you rebuild your own molecules. If what you say really works out, I promise to bring you a nugget. Not a big one, but genuine gold."

Bill re-attached his leg. "I gotta say I'm disappointed, Pine Tree. See, you're turning into your Grunkle Ford! That was a hilarious bit, the leg bit! Even Fiddleford woulda laughed at that one! You an' Ford though—nothin'! But, yeah, what I told you's straight truth. Hurts me not to lie, but whattaya gonna do? Talkin' to you's like talkin' to myself, and I never lie to myself. Well, sometimes I do, but I can always tell the difference! Better go, kid. Xanthar ain't predictable, and you've got some shielding to put up."

"Thanks, Bill."

"Not worth mentioning, Pine Tree. Say hi to Shooting Star for me." As Dipper started to fade from the Mindscape, as if on impulse, Bill added, "Dipper! Good luck!"

* * *

Three moonstones tucked away in strategic places in each basement and subbasement; more rounds of unicorn hair ringing each one. "I hope these hold," Stanford said as they finished the last one. "An hour to sunset, and the thing is close."

Upstairs they found Wendy staring out the window of the guest room. "I think it stopped," she said. "It's not even a mile away, judging from the tree falls."

"Waiting for sundown," Ford said.

Dipper asked, "Hey, where's Mabel?"

"Dunno."

She wasn't in the Shack. Dipper found her on the back porch, sitting on the edge, legs dangling. "Why won't he come?" she asked softly.

Dipper sat down next to her. "Russ?"

She gave him a sad, sideways glance. "Yeah. I've called until I'm hoarse."

"Maybe he can't come. His folks don't' seem to like the idea."

"I'm afraid he's gonna try to stop that thing on his own," she said. "If Bill wasn't lying—Dipper, Russ could die!"

"Yeah, he needs to know how dangerous it is."

"I wish he'd come."

Looking out over the backyard, toward the Bottomless Pit and the rows of forest trees beyond, and farther still to the bluffs and the mountains already golden in the westering sunlight, Dipper thought, _It's too beautiful to be destroyed. It's too quiet for a war to break out._

He was about to get up and pull Mabel to her feet—it was time to go inside—but she jumped up on her own. "Russ! There he is!"

The boy came striding out of the forest, just short of running. Dipper noticed again the peculiar grace of his stride, an athlete's power, a dancer's balance. Cat-like.

No. More like a—

"I'll stand with you," Russ said from the ground, finally managing to pronounce the contraction right.

"Russ," Dipper said, "Mabel can't come outside. You have to come in with us."

"It's OK," Mabel said, reaching out her hand.

"I cannot," Russ told her. "I'll show you why. Don't be afraid."

He must have stood at the very edge of the barrier that protected the Shack from anything occult. He thrust his right arm toward them—

And instantly it shriveled into a leg and a paw.

"You're a fox," Dipper said.

Russ pulled his arm back, and it became human again. "I am one of the foxen," he corrected. "A skin-changer. We can become human. I _am_ part-human. My grandmother was a full human woman who went to live in the forest with my grandfather. My mother is half-human."

Dipper asked, "Are your parents controlling the animals?"

"Yes," Russ said. "They know we owe your uncle our lives. They don't understand everything about your kind, though. They are only trying to protect him from the evil that approaches." He looked at Mabel, his features writhing in grief. "You hate me now. I will go away. I have loved you since first I saw you, when I was only a cub, but—it cannot be. Goodbye, Mabel."

"Wait, Russ."

Mabel stepped off the porch and through the barrier. She hugged Russ and then the two kissed. Dipper turned his back. _Her first one was when she kissed a merman who smelled like haddock. Who am I to judge?_

"You must go back inside," Russ said quietly.

"I know. But later—when this is over—"

"My mother understands," Russ said. "But not my father. He will never consent."

"People can change," Mabel told him. "We'll beat this monster and he can change his mind then. You'll see."

She came up onto the porch and took Dipper's arm.

He turned around to look at the red-headed boy. "Russ, listen: Tell your father and mother that this being's touch can kill. The animals have to stay out of its reach. We have some weapons that might help us fight it. The animals must let my uncle do what he can if he has to come outside to face it. Will you tell them that?"

"I will."

"And remember, the animals can't fight it. It's not anything from this world. Keep them safe."

"If I can." Apologetically, he said, "Mabel, I can travel faster in fox form. You should not watch."

"I don't care," Mabel said. "I really don't."

He turned his back on then, kicked off his shoes, and stripped off his shirt and pants and then—changed. It wasn't like a movie, not a werewolf struggle with muscles convulsing and body contorting—it happened more like a magician's trick, the boy turning, beginning a stride, and in less than the blink of an eye transforming into the graceful form of a leaping fox, running full-out, not a jogging dog-trot but powerful bounds more reminiscent of a cheetah than anything canine. For a few seconds, the lowering sun painted his fur bright red, and then he was in shadow and then gone.

Mabel stepped down from the porch again and gathered his scattered clothing. "He'll need these later," she told Dipper.

Neither of them had noticed T.K. O'Grady coming up to the door behind them, but he waited there, and he backed away as they came in. Mabel's head was down, her nose buried in the shirt she carried, so she didn't notice.

But Dipper saw T.K.'s face. Behind the round glasses his eyes were wet, and he looked as if someone had just broken his heart.

* * *

**Chapter 18**

"Are you sure this will work, Grunkle Ford?" Dipper asked as he tinkered at one of the stations in Ford's lab.

From the next table over, where he tapped on a keyboard, Ford said, "Honestly, Dipper, I'm not sure of anything. But we'll try what might work. It's all we can do."

"I could try to reason with it," Dipper said. "Bill put a few of his molecules into me, and maybe—"

"If this is truly a denizen of the Mu reality, there's no hope of that. Muthonians understand brute force and a kind of forced loyalty. That's all. They don't have sense organs, or at least none that we understand. Language means nothing at all to them. A being like Bill could force a kind of telepathy, but humans aren't capable of that. Words would do no good. It comes down to a fight, Dipper."

"All finished," Dipper said, picking up the three devices he'd been working on. "I hope these will work on an alien."

"And I've done what I could here," Ford told him, switching off the computer. "I must say, I wish computing had been this advanced thirty-odd years ago. That would have made Stanley's search for me go a thousand times faster—I mean once the portal was repaired."

"You know," Dipper said quietly, "Grunkle Stan didn't do a bad job. I mean, he had no scientific or engineering training, and all he had to go by were the Journals and his memory of how the portal looked and worked. Sure, it took him all that time—but any other man would've given up."

Ford smiled. "Yes, that thought has crossed my mind now and then."

"Then tell him," Dipper said. "Please. You might not get another chance."

With a sigh, Ford said, "You're right. Mabel has advised me to do that, too. I find it difficult, though—my dad always taught me not to talk about feelings. He said that made you weak."

"I don't think it does."

The walkie-talkie made a sudden snapping sound, and Wendy's voice came loud and clear: "You guys! Something's happening! Get up here!"

"Let's go!" Ford took one of the devices, Dipper tucked one into a special deep pocket of his vest, carried the other in his hand, and they ran for the elevator. Just before it reached the main basement level, they nearly fell as the entire building shook and the lights momentarily went out. The elevator hesitated, then as the lights came back, whirred the rest of the way up and the doors opened. "You first," Ford said, and Dipper dashed up the steps.

"What's happened?" he asked.

"It's in the open," Wendy said. It just tried to smash into the Shack, but the barrier kept it out. It's nearly as big as the freakin' house!"

"It's out front now!" Mabel yelled.

Ford and Dipper hurried to the gift shop, where everyone was looking anxiously out the windows. Ford threw the door open—Stan yelled, _"No!"_ but Ford snapped, "The wards mean that an open door makes no difference, Stanley!"—and Dipper stood beside him, staring into the twilight.

In the dimness, the alien creature really did resemble a gigantic loaf of spoiled, purple-moldy bread that had grown gorilla limbs. It stood in the middle of the parking lot, ran forward, smashed through the low fence, and would have rammed the Shack had the wards not been in place.

A shimmering multicolored force field sprang into existence, and Xanthar collided with it. The Shack vibrated from the impact, but the wards held. As though baffled and infuriated, Xanthar reared back and pounded with its fists. The field sparkled and glittered and—nothing else happened.

Ford held a scanner and aimed it through the open door. "It's not getting any energy from the field at all!" he said. "The barrier is perfect. I don't think it understands why it isn't growing stronger. Muthonians absorb energy—but it can't even touch the kind that we've created."

"Dudes," Wendy said from a nearby window, "is it, like, shrinking?"

"Yeah, dawgs, it is!" Soos said from beside her. "When it hit us from behind, it was, like, three or four feet bigger than it is now! This is inexplicable!"

"No, it's using energy at a furious rate," Ford said. "The more it uses, the smaller it becomes. If we could keep it attacking us, it might in time shrink down to nothing!"

"Oh," Soos said. "Then I guess it's, like, you know, totally explicable and junk. Thanks, Dr. Ford, dawg."

However, the creature realized or maybe simply felt that it was losing ground. It backed off and circled the Shack, as though scanning for a weakness, an opening. "Ford," Stan asked, "did you throw everything onto the back-up power?"

"That was the first thing I did," Stanford said. "We're on self-contained generator power only now. I also switched off the main electric lines down at the foot of the driveway. Electricity would only feed it."

"Good thinkin'."

"Yes," Ford said. "Um, Stanley—I don't believe I ever told you—your repairing the portal, with no scientific or engineering training—that was very astute of you, really. You should be proud of yourself."

"Don't get mushy on me," Stan snapped. "We can do a sibling hug if we get through this alive."

"With pats!" Mabel insisted.

"What's it doin', what's it doin', dudes?" Soos asked.

"Diggin'!" Wendy said. "It's gonna try to come up beneath us."

"We're prepared," Ford told her.

They felt it like an earthquake, a rumbling shudder. Other than that—nothing. A few minutes later the creature surfaced again, smaller than before. Now it was only three-quarters of the size it had been.

"Did it do that during Weirdmageddon?" Dipper asked. "Shrink, I mean?"

"We just got a good look at it that one time," Mabel said. "It sure didn't get little then!"

"During Weirdmageddon, the entire weirdness bubble was full of unearthly energies flooding in from Bill's dimension," Ford said. "It could draw on those. Now—Earth doesn't offer all that many strong sources. Lightning, fire, volcanic heat, even living things—nearly every form of energy but sunlight—but compared to the forces Bill let loose, those are insignificant to its needs."

Xanthar retreated out of sight. They heard crashing noises far down toward the highway, and then a red light flooded into the dusk. "What's it doing?" Stan asked.

Melody and Sheila had gone upstairs. They came down, Sheila holding the powerful binoculars. "It uprooted about twenty trees," she said. "And it set fire to them!"

"And it crawled right into the flames," Melody added. "Is it killing itself?"

"No," Ford said. "It's feeding."

"Look," Stan said, "when it comes back, I'm gonna go out on the porch an' shoot it." He hefted the destabilizer.

"No good," Ford told him. "The beam would lose focus as it passed outward through the barrier. You'd have to be in the clear to make a hit—and even that might not be enough to stop Xanthar. We can't risk it until you absolutely can't miss with the first shot. It's not very intelligent, but if we just wounded it, it would know enough to avoid a second hit."

That was a long night. Xanthar came back at midnight, grown larger—though not as big as he had first appeared. "Heat is not a high-quality source of energy," Ford said. "But he's recuperated some."

This time Xanthar tried to assault the Shack by hurling things—tree trunks, stones—but the barrier repulsed them all. It continued to prowl around and around the building, seemingly watchful in its own alien way.

Dipper, Mabel, Wendy, and T.K.—who had called his folks and told them he was camping with the kids—grabbed what sleep they could. It wasn't very much. Nobody objected when Wendy and Dipper lay down on a blanket spread on the floor and drifted off hugging each other. "Might be the closest they'll ever get," Stan murmured.

Mabel and T.K. sat together on the sofa and dozed a little, leaning into each other. Sheila and Melody relieved Stan, Ford, and Soos on lookout duty, though Soos insisted on staying in their bedroom to watch over Little Soos, who could sleep through a tornado.

Midnight passed. Stanley, awake again while the women tried to sleep a little, peered out the window. "It's just waitin' there," he told Ford. "Damn thing's got us under siege!"

"Maybe that's its plan, as far as it can have one," Ford told him. "Starve us out. Or maybe in its slow way it's trying to think. What time is it?"

"One-seventeen," Stanley said.

"Sunrise will be in four hours and, let me see, five minutes," Ford replied.

"Ya got that in your head, Poindexter?"

"It's simple enough," his brother told him. "Anyway, I'm thinking this: If we can engage this thing just before the sun rises—I mean minutes before—we just might be able to catch it unawares. The sun drains it faster than effort does. Maybe we can weaken it to the stage that a shot from the destabilizer will kill it."

"Yeah? What are the chances?"

"I haven't calculated, but offhand I'd estimate less than five in a hundred."

"Long odds are my favorite," Stan said.

They talked in low voices, planning what they might do and what might happen.

Just possibly.

* * *

At three-forty, as if his patience had simply worn out, Xanthar attacked again, the same brute battering-ram charge, repeated three times. Nothing happened, except he shrank a little. Again the beast started to tramp around and around the Shack, as though keeping watch in case the tiny creatures inside tried to flee.

At four-ten, when Xanthar had settled into place in the parking lot again, Stanley went out onto the porch. "Hiya, Ugly!" he yelled, waving his arms, knowing he was outlined by the light from the open door behind him. "You want a piece of me? Come an' get me! Deedley do! Beedley boo! Hey, I'm doin' this insolent dance for you, sucker!"

He barely rolled backward through the door before the impact. Xanthar's attack shook everything, woke the kids, even made Little Soos cry, and caused the protective barrier to flare a reddish-white and sizzle, its reaction so strong that it sent the creature reeling back, smoking.

"Well," Stan said as Ford helped him to his feet, "That got his interest. Think it'll hold him until sunup?"

"We'll have to see. Stanley, you're a brave man."

"Yeah, only when they mess with family."

* * *

_The darkness had begun to pale. Xanthar's fury seethed._

_The weak creatures hid in their shell! Not fair! Not fair!_

_He remembered, or his body did, the time when this construction came to life and fought him, puny, weaker than he was, so weak that it could be shoved without effort, pounded, shaken! But it had seized him—seized him, touched him without dying, as these creatures were supposed to die, not fair!—had seized him and had thrown him high and far, and he had crashed hard into the cliffs like a meteor striking, and tons of broken stone had fallen on him._

_His energies had been exhausted then. He had been so shrunken and drained that his body shut down, and for the first and only time in his memory he had . . . slept? Was that the word?_

_Had gone unconscious while he absorbed the energies around him, small energies, little burrowing creatures, the roots of ancient trees, and at last from far below the heat of the earth. Miserable food, a trickle, but enough to bring him back. And when he had been conscious at last, he was able to send a tendril down, passing through even stone, to the sluggish but life-giving heat of magma. That had charged him, had brought him back strong and eager for revenge._

_He should not have given so much of that great power back, when he tried to drown the tiny creatures in lava! So much strength sacrificed for anger._

_If only now . . . but he could sense that the superheated stone lay far, far below. Sending a tendril to it would take a year, longer than that, even._

_No time, not with the taunting, maddening Earth creatures so close, so close._

_He would end it with what strength he could gather quickly._

_End it and find the master._

_Or if not—he could not sense the master anywhere, and this reality was not the one he remembered, when he bathed, swam, in the ferocious energies of the master's dimension—if the master had for some reason departed, then—_

_Then he would remain here and clear the world of these vermin! Populate the world with his kind (he could reproduce by splitting bits of himself off). A night world, where they would rule. Sleep underground when the hateful sun rose. Emerge at night. Own the night. Own the world._

_Get stronger, stronger, stronger! Perhaps in time extinguish the sun! Make this world a Mu world! Destroy, destroy—_

_The sun was coming again._

_End it quickly._

_End it before the sun finds me._

_End it._

_End them!_

* * *

Past five a.m. and once more Xanthar returned to the attack.

At first, they all thought it had gone—for now everyone but Little Soos was awake—and as far as they could tell, Xanthar had retreated all the way down the driveway and out of sight.

"Has it given up?" Dipper asked.

"I'm afraid not," Ford said. "It's up to something. If it comes back, Stan and I are going to try a move that's, well, rather desperate. If it doesn't work, stay in the Shack for as long as you can. It's possible that if it gets one or both of us, it will go away. Be sure it has before you go outside the—"

"Grab hold of somethin'! Here it comes!" Stan bellowed.

Xanthar had gathered speed and came hurtling at them full-tilt.

The rampaging beast smashed into the invisible shield. It flared into sudden brightness like a stroke of lightning, momentary visibility, crackling with energies, and once more repelled Xanthar. The unearthly thing, knocked off its feet, rolled across the yard, the grass smoking from its touch.

The sun peeped above the eastern horizon, touching only the tops of trees, not low enough to strike Xanthar.

"Now!" Stan yelled, leaping through the gift-shop door, brandishing the destabilizer.

Ford, looking like an old-time two-gun Western movie star, ran after him, a destabilizing pistol in each hand.

Wendy, Mabel, Dipper, and T.K. pushed through the door and stood on the porch, watching. "Make way, there!" Sheila shoved her way to the front. "You be careful, Stanley!" she yelled.

"Lights now!" Ford yelled, and inside the Shack Melody threw the switches that made all the outside Shack lights flare to full power.

Dipper shaded his eyes. Over at the edge of the forest, Xanthar picked himself up. For the first time, Dipper saw it clearly, unobscured by twilight. The creature had no face, no eyes—no ears. Yet it sensed them. Somehow it sensed them, and Dipper caught a wave of fierce hatred rolling from it. Yet—yet, with Ford and Stanley there, flanking the porch, each just outside the barrier, it hesitated.

Dipper clenched his hands into fists and tried to conjure up his inner Bill. Fiercely he thought, _Cool it, Xanthar! These people are MINE, get it! Go dormant!_

That had no effect.

"Look!" Ford yelled, and Dipper opened his eyes.

From the trees just behind Xanthar—it was raining Gnomes. A dozen of the diminutive creatures had launched themselves, giving their ululating, high-pitched war cry, as irritating as a toddler on a sugar high—

They struck the creature's back—

And fell off, lifeless. "Don't touch him!" Dipper shouted, running down the steps. "It'll kill you! Hold back!"

Now like a gigantic cat, Xanthar paced slowly forward. If it had possessed a face, it would have been grinning. "Wait for it, wait for it," Ford cautioned. "Get it in your sights! Dipper, get back inside!"

A shout from the left yanked Dipper's attention that way. It was— _Russ?_

_Russ, running naked, at the head of a cadre of animals, bears and foxes and wolves—_

"Russ! No! Don't touch it!" he yelled.

But the boy seemed to have no intention of doing that. The animals lined up—as they had prevented Ford from re-entering the Valley, they were going to cordon off the Shack from Xanthar's approach.

And for a moment that seemed to work. The purple beast hesitated, swaying its blank front "face" from side to side, as though puzzled. Then it stepped forward and with an almost casual movement, backhanded three deer.

They collapsed as though shot through the head.

Russ shouted again, in no language that Dipper understood, and the animals took a step back and closed ranks.

"It's just gonna kill them!" Mabel wailed. "Russ! No!"

She leaped off the porch, and both Dipper and T.K. just missed stopping her. She was running across the lawn toward the red-headed fox boy—

Russ, distracted, turned to look toward her, threw up his hand to warn her away—

Xanthar bounded, leaped right over the animals and eagerly rushed Mabel—

Russ, screaming in anger, threw himself at the creature—

"Mabel! No!"

Stan had dropped his weapon and ran to cut Mabel off, hurling himself forward, catching her in a rolling tackle, getting to his feet while clutching her, turning and running back toward the Shack—

Wendy had leaped off the porch, too, and she ran forward and said, "I got her, man! Throw her to me and get to safety!"

"Nuh-uh!" Stan pushed past, grabbing Wendy's arm and dragging her along, too.

Xanthar shook off Russ's lifeless body, which still clung to its featureless face, and with a roar leaped again, cutting off Stan's retreat—

"Hey!" Sheila's voice. She had jumped from the porch and had picked up the destabilizer. "You! You ain't monster enough to take my man!"

Ford had dropped to one knee, both pistols raised. "Come and get us!" he yelled.

The creature seemed momentarily indecisive, but then it turned like a cat and barreled down on the two—

Sunlight struck it, and it began to smoke—

All three of the destabilizers fired at once, with a sizzle and a blinding glare of actinic light. Stan all but threw Mabel into Dipper's and T.K.'s arms.

Wendy scrambled back onto the porch and then reached to pull Stan up. "Back on the porch! Retreat!" Ford yelled.

Sheila came up, the weapon cradled in both arms. "Not bad, pulls a little to the right, though."

Ford was the last one back up the steps. "Charge it up again!" he said.

On the lawn, Xanthar lay on its side, legs feebly stirring. Its box-like body had been cored—a smoking hole had been drilled right through the center. Smaller wounds showed at the joints of both front legs where they joined the body. It dwindled in the sunlight until it was not much larger than a horse, and then it seemed to stabilize.

"It's stunned," Ford said. "But for how long!"

"The sun'll help," Stan said. "Has it stopped shrinkin'?"

"I got this," Dipper said. "T.K., take care of Mabel."

Mabel was clinging to the Irish kid, gripping his shirt, her face buried against him, sobbing into his shoulder.

Dipper took out his weapon of choice, resisted Stan's effort to grab him, and ran to within a few feet of the struggling Xanthar. "Let's see what this will do." He switched on—a flashlight. Then another.

Both had crystals strapped to the lenses.

As two cones of reddish light struck Xanthar, he rapidly shrank again—down to a size no larger than an ordinary loaf of bread.

"Let me get to him, Dipper," said Ford, pushing Dipper aside. "I think this should do the trick."

He aimed a device a little like a ray-gun and a lot like a two-liter bottle with a funnel at one end, fired it—and a green ball of—energy? Glass?—whatever it was, it formed around the shrunken, stunned Xanthar. All movement stopped. The smoldering wisps froze inside the bubble.

"Now," Ford said, "we have him—if we can keep him trapped! Time has stopped for him. This force-field will decay in a few days, though—"

Mabel ran across the lawn and past them, screaming, "No, no, no."

She fell to her knees and embraced the limp form of a dead red fox. Its head lolled in her arms.

T.K. came and stood over her, hands at his sides, looking helpless.

Wendy put her hand on the boy's shoulder. "Don't say anything yet, man. Let her grieve," she said softly. "She has to do it."

The animals quietly departed, all that still lived. Three dead deer lay on the lawn. Jeff and a few other Gnomes were already carrying away their dead.

From the gloom beneath the forest trees stepped two humans, a man and a woman, both handsome, barefoot, both wearing fluttering, rusty-red robes from neck to foot, and both red-haired.

They came and stood with their arms around each other, looking down at Mabel.

She raised her streaming eyes toward them and, choking, said, "He—he loved me."

"More than you know," the man said softly.

And the woman whispered, "Our only son."

* * *

**Chapter 19**

**From the Journals of Dipper Pines:** _Friday morning, June 13—Mabel begged the Renards—she's Amoreuse, he is Vulpín (I hope I spelled those right)—to bury Russ where she could visit the grave. Russ's father asked her, very kindly, where—but he told her it should not be within the grounds of the Mystery Shack, for their kind stay away from human buildings._

_Wendy volunteered the hillside where her family is buried, but said the grave could be outside the fence, away from the others but not completely isolated. Amoreuse whispered that she would approve of that, and her husband nodded. So while Ford dealt with the bubble containing Xanthar, Grunkle Stan, Wendy, T.K. Mabel and I drove to the base of the hill in Soos's Jeep. The Renards said they would bring their son._

_They met us as soon as we climbed the hill. I don't know how they got there so fast, and I didn't want to ask. Grunkle Stan, T.K., and I dug the grave. It didn't have to be very large. He was small as a fox. Wendy cut some fresh branches, and we lined the bottom with those, like a nest. When Russ's father laid the little fox in the grave, Mabel broke down, but she asked if he could be covered with the clothes he'd worn as a human. Again they granted that. T.K. stepped down into the grave and carefully draped the clothes over Russ's body._

_Mabel found some wild columbine, picked some, and dropped them in. I noticed their flowers were red—like Russ's hair as a human, or his fur as a fox. After she dropped the flowers, I held her while she sobbed harder than I'd ever heard her cry before. She shook so much that I felt helpless._

_Wendy cleared her throat and said, "Uh, I don't know what you foxen believe in, but if you'll let me, I'd like to recite a poem that my Dad wanted to read at my Mom's funeral, but—well, he just couldn't. I've kinda memorized it, though."_

_"Yes," Amoreuse said. Neither she nor her husband were crying, but their faces showed their grief._

_Wendy cleared her throat, and with her voice trembling a little, she said these words:_

* * *

_"Though you think you've lost me,_

_I am here; just look around._

_In all the shining things you'll see,_

_My love can still be found._

_I'll be in every waving leaf_

_On every swaying tree,_

_Look not with eyes but with belief,_

_And there I'll always be._

_Hear my voice in every breeze_

_And let each sigh bring you relief;_

_My voice whispers in the trees,_

_'Rest now from your grief.'_

_In the thunders of the sea,_

_In the murmur of the brook_

_There you will always find me,_

_If you will hear and look._

_Weep, but let your tears then dry,_

_And gaze on the sky above,_

_I'm always near you, low and high,_

_When you recall our love."_

* * *

_I reached for Wendy's hand and squeezed it. The Renards bowed to her. Then Mr. Renard floored me. He came and knelt in the grass beside the grave and hugged Mabel tight. "Hurts will heal," he said in the kindest voice. "Hold him in your heart and memory. We believe our dead come back—but not as foxen, as true foxes. He will be unburdened by human feelings and regrets then. The half-life we live between fox and human forms is not joy; it is sorrow. That will be forgotten. But a small red fox may come into your life one day, dear Mabel. Treat it kindly."_

_He rose, and Amoreuse took his place, kneeling and hugging my sister. "We knew this was coming," she said. "For last night the Banshee herself warned us. We knew there would be a death, and we knew whose. But some things are meant to be. We did not even try to forbid our son from trying to help you, because we knew his heart turned to you." She stroked Mabel's hair. "You think you caused his death, but you did not. He gave his life because he wished to. In that last moment, he knew his sacrifice saved you, and he died happy. I will not tell you not to mourn him. We shall mourn him, too. But I will say what he would say: Life is for the living. Let your heart mend. Find all the joy that still waits to be found."_

_They both rose and bowed to us all—and then they were foxes, running away side by side into the forest._

_Mabel and Wendy sat in the car while we filled in the grave. Stan tamped the earth down firmly, and T.K. and I hauled stones over to build a cairn to protect and mark it._

_By the time we finished, all sorts of animals had ventured from the woods—a buck and a doe, bears, a puma, rabbits, squirrels, raccoons, possums, but no foxes. And there were more—I can't remember them all. They stood for a while and then walked away, one by one. When we got back to the Jeep, Wendy beckoned T.K. to sit in the back seat with Mabel. She and I went to sit in the front. Grunkle Stan said, "Hey, Wendy—mind drivin' back? I'm havin' a little trouble seein'."_

_So with him riding shotgun, me in the middle, and my Lumberjack Girl at the wheel, we drove back to the Shack, where Melody, Sheila, and Abuelita were waiting to offer Mabel whatever comfort they could._

* * *

Wendy dropped T.K. off at his house, and then the others went back to the Mystery Shack, where Soos already was working on repairs while his son watched from his playpen on the porch.

They missed the fishing opener, and Dipper, Mabel, and Wendy passed on the dance that followed. That night the three women, Wendy, and Mabel went to sit in the bonfire clearing, a cheerful campfire warming them, alternately weeping and laughing at old memories, the way people do.

Stan sacked out early. Dipper and Ford went down to the basement levels. "I used your prototype portal once," Dipper told Ford. "Back when the Horroracle was trying to end the world. I couldn't fit through it, though. But Xanthar's bubble could."

"In a way I hesitate to try," Ford said. "Still—the Mu dimensions aren't very dangerous. Most of the Muthonians are inoffensive. Not civilized, but not hostile or actively evil, and they have no wish to invade our dimension. Do you recall the precise one?"

"Mu 214 slash exclamation point," Dipper said.

"Late in the sequence, then. I'll program that into the computer and patch into the prototype," Ford told him.

As talented and smart as he was, Ford remained a hunt-and-peck typist. Dipper itched to take over, but he sat tight and watched. After about fifteen minutes, Ford pressed "Enter" and they powered up the model of the portal. It buzzed to life—though small, it drew so much electricity that the lights momentarily dimmed—and its display flicked through letters, numbers, and cabalistic signs before stabilizing.

The triangular opening shimmered and became what looked like a window into hell. Dipper could see the surface of a planet—but the sky lowered blood-red, heat shimmered in dizzy waves from the sandy red surface, and the two suns in the sky blazed orange-red, too. "That's it," Ford said. "A Muthonian world if I ever saw one." He donned the insulated gloves that he used to handle Xanthar's prison bubble—the alien still lay frozen inside, exactly as he had been from the beginning—and gingerly tossed it through the portal. "Shut it down!" he said.

Dipper pressed the red button, the high-pitched whirring sounds slowed and died, random discharges forked like lightning, and the image faded. "He's through. We sent him home, and I hope when the time field decays, he has an uncomfortably warm reception. I'm going to scramble the coordinates I put into the computer. You unplug the portal, just to be sure," Ford said, taking off his gloves.

After he disconnected the power, Dipper joined him over beside the computer and said, "Great-uncle Ford, the Renards told us something kinda weird. They said the banshee visited them last night with a warning."

"Perhaps because when Russ was so close to his death, she at last knew who the victim would be," Ford said, turning off the computer. The screen went black.

Dipper hesitated, but asked, "Do you think we can get in touch with her?"

With a surprised expression, Ford shook his head. "No. No one can summon a banshee. But why?"

Dipper cleared his throat. "Because I wanted to—to thank her, I guess, and to ask her—see, I have a feeling that somehow _she_ saved Mabel's life. I think the one whose death she was lamenting was supposed to be Mabel—but Russ gave himself instead."

"Why do you think that, Mason?" Ford asked.

 _He calls me by my real name only when he's super-serious._ Dipper took a deep breath. "Think about it. If it had been you or Grunkle Stan, the rest of us would've been devastated. But we're still young. We found out last year, and last spring again, that after a death you grieve and heal. If it had been me, even, I think Wendy would have been pretty broken up, and I know you guys would have, but I've been close to death before, and I hope everybody would get over it. I mean, all the close calls I've had, my dying would almost be expected. But—but—Mabel—"

Dipper shuddered with sobs he could no longer hold back. To his astonishment, Stanford put his arms around him. "I know what you mean," he said softly, patting Dipper's back. "Mabel is the soul of joy in the family. Losing her would be like—like losing our hearts."

Still not able to speak without gasping, Dipper said, "And I think—the monster sensed—that. Knew that—taking Mabel—would be the worst—blow it could strike. And Russ—really loved her!" Stanford handed him a handkerchief, and he wiped his eyes. "I think Mabel was halfway in love with him, too. Another month, and she might have gone into the forest with him. Would have become a fox, if that's possible. His grandmother did it, they say."

"Perhaps," Ford suggested gently, "Russ also sensed that Mabel wasn't meant for that kind of life and could never really be his. She's fully human, and her happiness is of the human kind. What is the quotation I've heard at military funerals? No one has greater love than this: to lay down their life for a friend."

Dipper blew his nose. "Will Mabel ever get over this?"

"Mason, believe me, one day she will. A great poet's life was once shattered when his little daughter died. Years later, for some reason he felt for an instant a great, deep happiness, and he wrote a poem about being surprised by joy. He says that such joy is tempered by remembering the lost loved one—that not being able to share that kind of happiness is truly deep sorrow. But life brings everyone both joy and grief. Life _is_ joy and grief. Trust me, son, Mabel will recover, and she'll be stronger for it."

Dipper looked down at his feet. "I hope so. I wish I could help."

Ford smiled. "You can help by being Dipper. Her brobro, as she says. Do things with her. Encourage her. Ask her to go on your mystery hunts. Let her knit and make scrapbooks and do every silly thing that comes into her head, and just—be there for her."

As they started to leave, Dipper looked back at the silent, miniature portal. "I've got one promise to keep," he murmured. "Bill Cipher helped me as much as he could. I owe him a gold nugget."

"The one the manotaur boy gave you last summer?"

"It's the only one I have. I'll go give it to him tomorrow. Do you—no, I won't ask you to come along. Somehow Bill and I have this weird truce, but he tortured you, and—no, forget it. I'll go alone."

Wendy stayed over one last night, and she and Mabel shared the attic. In fact, Mabel pushed her bed next to Wendy's so she could hang onto her hand whenever the tears came. Before the exhausted girl fell asleep, she said in a hoarse voice, "Thanks for saying that poem beside his grave. It must've been hard."

"Yeah, it was, kinda," Wendy admitted. "But I just thought it was right."

"Who's it by?" Mabel asked.

Wendy chuckled. "Promise you won't tell anybody?"

"No, but why?"

"'Cause I'm pretty sure my dad wrote it. Long time after Mom passed, I found an old spiral notebook one day when I was cleanin' his bedroom. Nothin' in it but that poem, page after page of it as it developed, and I could see how it had been worked on and reworked and re-copied over an' over, all in Dad's messy print-writing. My aunt later told me he'd meant to read it but broke down and couldn't, so today, I guess I kinda said it for Mom, too. See, I memorized it but never even told Dad I found it. Manly Dan won't want anybody thinkin' he's a poet!"

"I won't tell," Mabel whispered, just as she fell asleep.

The next morning Dipper woke up early—just before sunup. For a moment, he was confused before he remembered he'd borrowed the guest room from Mabel. Then he fumbled around, switched on the lamp, and stopped, staring.

A gold nugget the size of a small gumball gleamed on the bedside stand. It rested on a torn sheet of notepaper. And scrawled on it in blue ballpoint ink were the words: "Keep your own nugget, Dipper. It was a gift. And instead take this one to that one-eyed triangle demon. If he asks, tell him I donated it, and when he gets big enough if he resents my doing it—I'll punch him out again!"

The note wasn't signed, but Dipper said quietly, "Ford, you told Stan. Thank you guys."

He got up, dressed in his running clothes, carefully pocketed the nugget, set out to run to the Cipher effigy. Before he was even out of sight of the Shack, he heard pounding footsteps behind him and looked over his shoulder. Wendy, grinning, red hair flying, came even with him. He said, "I'm going—"

"I know, dork," she said cheerfully. "And I got your back."

They said nothing else, but like two graceful foxes on a bright morning, they ran easily side by side through the dappled shade and light of the forest.

* * *

_The End_

**Author's Note:**

> _Thanks, everyone, for putting up with this epic. This was a hard one to write because a close family member passed away—not unexpected, but he meant a lot to all of us—as it was going along and because I felt guilty over what I was doing to poor Mabel—maybe that's why it dragged on so long, because I knew what was coming and hated to write that scene—but I'm glad I finished it. Taking some time off now—not all that long—and I hope the next one will have some laughter in it!_


End file.
